New York in Twilight
by cagd
Summary: New York handles an infestation of Aliens in its own way in an ongoing series of short stories.
1. Broken Puzzle

It didn't start when one morning, elderly Mrs. Van Der Hooven of the Flatbush Van Der Hoovens, while out walking her Shi-tzu, watched in horror as a long-taloned blackish seven-fingered hand shot out of a storm drain and grabbed Sir Lancelot III in mid hysterical bark, a bark which ended in an abrupt canine scream that sounded almost human to the now equally hysterical octogenarian before ending in a sickeningly wet crunch.

Followed by a slithering, hissing noise - which Mrs. Van Der Hooven didn't hear as she screamed for the police, for her husband, for her son-in-law, a prominent trial lawyer, for the Marines, for anybody who would listen…

…too bad New York had learned long ago to ignore the screams crazy old women – what with there being so many.

Nor did it start when the homeless shelters and soup kitchens, of which there were also many, noticed that the usual steady stream of human wreckage coming in hourly decreased to an erratic trickle, even as rumors of desertions from the ranks of the Army of the Unwanted… increased?

Then there was that rapid decrease in unwanted cats and dogs being brought to the normally overcrowded animal shelters…

...that's not when it started either, though Animal Control had to admit that there were fewer and fewer calls to come remove the flotsam and jetsam of human whim and indifference from the streets, abandoned buildings and underpasses…

So, what about the rumors of sewer workers and other underground employees walking off the job, mid-shift without so much as filing for unemployment?

The Unions didn't make the connection either, even though it sent them and Management at each other's throats… nothing new there, either...

Then there were days, entire days, when the many pest control companies went without so much as a call to come remove Mickey's undesirable cousins from the toilet, from the basement, from the crawlspace before he or she could cause an epidemic, or more likely an electrical fire… of which there were an elevated number that week, had anybody cared to consult the records of fire departments all over Manhattan…

(No…)

How about Missing Persons?

(Or the steady downturn in the number of prostitutes...)

None of it started with an absence of unwanted humans, cats, dogs, and rodents in a city known for all four…

No…those were just symptoms…


	2. Curio Cabinet

_When Crazy Susan was twelve, her dear Papa told her now that dear Mama was dead, they would no longer be attending the beautiful Presbyterian Church down the street from their mansion. _

_Instead, dear Papa would read an appropriate quote to her from the Bible each morning at breakfast, and then they would meditate upon it._

_This upset __ Crazy __Susan; she loved the beautiful stained glass windows and elderly Reverend Boyle who always had a kind word for everyone. However, Crazy Susan was a good girl and kept this to herself - dear Papa would not have been pleased had she voiced any dismay at his decision._

_When Crazy Susan was thirteen, dear Papa took away her pretty dresses in shades of yellow and pink and locked away her dolls. "You are a woman now," he said as he handed her a pile of her dear, departed Mama's dresses, "You need a woman's clothing, you must wear your hair as your dear mother once did and never cut it."_

_This upset __ Crazy __Susan, as she loved her bright colored dresses and her pretty dolls, and wanted to have her long golden curls bobbed like the Irish maids. However, Crazy Susan was a good girl and kept this to herself; dear Papa would not have been pleased had she voiced any dismay at his decision._

_When Crazy Susan was fourteen, dear Papa dismissed all the servants, the ones that hadn't left one by one since dear Mama died. Her English governess had been the last to go, holding Crazy Susan tight, mouth pressed in a firm line while giving Susan's dear Papa a strange look as she took her suitcases out to the waiting taxi, leaving Crazy Susan and her dear Papa alone in the echoing mansion that had been her home since birth._

_This upset __ Crazy __Susan: she loved the hustle and bustle of the Irish maids as they tended to the large house with its old-fashioned turrets, gables and polished marble floors. The sight of Miss Chadwick leaving made Crazy Susan want to run after the woman, the hem of her dear Mama's long skirts raised high so she wouldn't trip over it, calling, "Come back, come back! Don't leave me here all alone in this horrible place!"_

_However, Crazy Susan was a good girl and kept this to herself. Dear Papa would not have been pleased had she voiced any dismay at his decision…_

…instead Crazy Susan sat at one end of the gleaming dining room table, night after night, dear Papa at the other, eating the meals she cooked, as he lectured her on what he deemed important, at what he deemed _proper_, so that one morning many years later, Crazy Susan, while poking around the tide line in New York Harbor knew what to do with the large, rough oval with a cross on one end she found washed up on the filthy shoreline among the empty beer cans and fast food containers: she took it home with her.

Home was still the large, echoing mansion her father built so many years ago that she inherited after he died: from rough stone cellar to rusting wrought iron weather vane, it was now Crazy Susan's, lock, stock, and barrel.

It was a little worse for wear, the once manicured lawn now overgrown with weeds and the cast-iron deer adorning it was a slowly dissolving four-legged mass of rust. The slate roof tiles were dropping out one by one like rotting teeth and the windows were still shuttered just as her dear Papa had left them after her dear Mama had died.

Still, as much as Crazy Susan loathed the place with a dull, habitual loathing, where else could she go?

She pushed the wobbly shopping cart and its eclectic cargo of found objects up the cracked flagstone sidewalk that meandered brokenly through the weeds until she reached the front stoop where there had once been stone lions.

The lions disappeared one Halloween night years before. Crazy Susan didn't miss them much – they had been dear Papa's– and as dear Papa was dead, the Italian marble beasts and their loss didn't raise all that much of a fuss. What _did_ bother Crazy Susan was that somebody had entered her dear Papa's collection and taken something.

Had he been alive, dear Papa would _not_ have been pleased.

Crazy Susan parked the shopping cart amidst the trash that had blown against the front portico during last night's storm, gathered up the things that she had placed in it and hobbled up the uneven steps, pausing only to wrestle with the six different locks on the double front doors with their matching brass knockers shaped like the slim hands of elegant women, before going in, the mahogany door slamming shut behind her with a bang followed by six clicks of differing volumes as Crazy Susan refastened the locks behind her, leaving the outside of the house to blankly contemplate the unkempt grounds that insulated and isolated it from the newly gentrified brownstone neighborhood which surrounded it.

_When Crazy Susan was fourteen, dear Papa told her that as she was now a woman, she must do a woman's work. She was up from dawn to dusk cooking and cleaning just as the departed servants once had as her dear Papa endlessly worked on his collection. Crazy Susan really wanted to write letters to her favorite cousins and visit the neighbors the way her dear Mama once had. However, Crazy Susan was a good girl and kept this to herself, as dear Papa would not have been pleased had she voiced any dismay at his decision._

Crazy Susan stepped over and around the tottering ceiling high stacks of newspapers and magazines, the record albums, the spill of empty picture frames that filled the once fine front hallway. Dear Papa had built a marvelous collection, and Crazy Susan had added to it in her own dutiful way over the years, which would have pleased him. She had not only added to the collection, but like dear Papa she had meticulously cataloged every piece of string, every fragment of broken china, every chicken bone, discarded newspaper, banana peel, empty matchbook, pretty stone, pigeon feather and hubcap: she even knew exactly how long the spliced together strand that made up the 500 pound ball of string that dominated the second-best parlor was, as well as where every empty bleach bottle was stored because all of this had been numbered, described, and recorded in dear Papa's big book, the one in his now overflowing study which was filled with baskets of bottle caps and bales of old Montgomery Ward's catalogs dating back to 1929: nothing must be wasted, nothing must be discarded.

Dear Papa would be displeased, otherwise.

Eventually Crazy Susan wended her way through the dining room (old fur coats and trophy heads), the pantry (burned out light bulbs), and into the kitchen where she lived most of the time when she wasn't out finding things to add to dear Papa's collection in the early hours of the morning so that she wouldn't have to speak to anyone because even though he was dead, dear Papa would not have approved if she ever so much as met eyes with the pimple-faced young man who delivered her groceries every Friday morning at ten sharp, leaving them by the back door: 21 cans of generic cat food in assorted flavors, day-old bread, and dented cans of fruit and vegetables that had lost their labels– after dear Mama died, this was what dear Papa always ordered; Crazy Susan never saw any reason to do otherwise though she had never owned a cat – it was cheaper than people food - dear Papa would have been displeased had she dared spend any more than she had to of his money.

Anyway, you could eat cat food cold – which saved Crazy Susan a lot of time and money, time which could be spent on adding to Papa's collection, and money which could be stuffed into the walls, just as dear Papa had in the years before he died.

Crazy Susan lit a candle end in the dim room with its orderly heaps of old chairs, broken dolls, and empty Coke bottles and studied the strange oval with a cross on one end that she had found down on the seashore after last night's storm.

How perfectly odd – she leafed through dear Papa's book. There was nothing like it recorded there, nothing like it at all unless you counted the six dozen flaccid footballs which languished in the coal bin by the long cold furnace; even those paled in comparison…

Crazy Susan didn't know if she should be elated or terrified by this. Dear Papa loved his collection, but he hated change unless he was the one making it.

_When Crazy Susan was fifteen, dear Papa came to her bedroom one night and told her, "As with your mother whom you so resemble, I will make of you my wife." He lay atop her doing things to her that were painful, leaving Crazy Susan bleeding between her legs without looking at her when he finished. After a while Crazy Susan got used to this so that dear Papa's visits became more annoying than painful._

_If only dear Papa would look at her when he made his visits…_

Crazy Susan poked at the mystery she'd found where it rested on the cluttered kitchen table. It gave a little, like one of the old footballs in her inherited collection, with a pebbled translucent muddy green surface decorated with barnacles.

Crazy Susan knew they were barnacles because she had an entire drawer of them in the butler's pantry, labeled and dated - just as dear Papa would have wanted them.

The mystery had something inside it, which sloshed and gurgled as Crazy Susan rolled it one way and than the other – Crazy Susan held her candle stub to it; something twitched within.

_When Crazy Susan was sixteen, dear Papa beat her, weeping after she complained of a sour stomach every morning, calling her "Jezebel!" Later when the baby came she lay alone in the darkness of her room listening to her dear Papa argue with the doctor, "She is my daughter. I did not raise her only to give her to other men!" The doctor was extremely unpleasant about it, calling Susan's dear Papa dreadful names that Crazy Susan did not understand until dear Papa shouted, "All right, you hypocrite! How much will it take to keep you quiet???"_

_After that, whenever a baby came, Crazy Susan's dear Papa took care of the matter himself._

Crazy Susan propped the strange thing she'd found on the shore up among the stacks of magazines and newspapers on the big coal fired range and opened a can of cat food. She looked thoughtfully at it as she mechanically dipped an old spoon from dear Mama's wedding set into the container and chewed without tasting the contents.

Was it a seed?

Was it an egg from some exotic bird, blown in by the storm?

_When Crazy Susan was thirty, she lost track of how many babies dear Papa had taken care of for her – each one tagged and cataloged in the basement as they should be even as dear Papa's collection grew and expanded into every room of dear Papa's fine house with its marble floors and dark wood walls while outside the shuttered windows and the rusty iron fence, the world went on, indifferent to what played out in the slowly dissolving house. Crazy Susan still wished dear Papa would look her in the face after he visited her, so one night she left her room beside the kitchen and moved into the attic where rats cavorted and spiders spun in silence. Dear Papa raged up at her, too old and stiff to climb the ladder while Crazy Susan enjoyed the first undisturbed night's sleep she'd had in years._

Really, the egg, as this was what Crazy Susan in her countless layers of dear Mama's and dear Papa's clothing had decided it was, was fascinating. Dislike of change or not, it would be added to dear Papa's collection. Crazy Susan, meal finished, gently shook the egg. It gurgled - whatever rested inside twitched harder.

_When Crazy Susan was forty, she pushed a wobbly stack of encyclopedias over upon her dear Papa in the formal parlor because she was tired of him touching her whenever she came down from her attic fortress to help him with his collection and make his meals. The large, heavy books caught him squarely- knocking him over as tower after tower of books followed, obliterating him while Crazy Susan locked the parlor door behind her, only opening it years later after the moans and then the dreadful stench died down to something bearable. Crazy Susan, like the good girl she was, cataloged and tagged dear Papa, storing him in the cellar with the babies, free at last except that she still heard his footsteps behind her in the maze of books and bicycles, of bird cages and bridles that dear Papa's fine home had become._

_Crazy Susan tried to leave, but the daylight world outside the house had changed too much: the brownstone homes on either side which had once held the families of lawyers and businessmen now housed black people who jeered at her as she made her slow, gray opossum's way down the street._

_It was all too much - Crazy Susan fled back behind the rusting iron gate and tightly closed shutters: as much as she loathed dear Papa's collection, Crazy Susan was part of it._

Crazy Susan turned her attention to the end decorated with a fissured cross- how queer!

It was even queerer when the cross silently split open as she leaned over it, lank, greasy hair trailing in the dust decorating the knife-scarred table.

Crazy Susan put on her dear Papa's gold rimmed spectacles and squinted through them at it...

Whatever it was flew out of the egg and grabbed her face, whipping a bony tail about Crazy Susan's withered neck before sliding a fleshy tube down her throat.

_When Crazy Susan was fifty, she was so much a part of her dear Papa's collection that she began venturing out to add to it before the world awoke – only garbage men, prostitutes and drug dealers saw her – a silent, hunched figure pushing a shopping cart in the pre-dawn glow that gilded the distant towers of Manhattan – which scuttled __back to the house that festered silently among the weeds__ with loads of things gleaned from trash cans, from gutters, from alleys.  
_

_The whores, the garbage men, the thieves, that replaced the lawyers and tradesmen of her childhood, left her alone._

Crazy Susan fell over backwards to the hard tiled floor in among the stacks of cookbooks and empty cat food tins, dreaming, dreaming…

(…dreaming of babies, babies who crawled up the stairs of the cellar where dear Papa had stored them, boys and girls, toothless, dusty and naked except for the tags around their twig-thin ankles stating the time and date in dear Papa's precise lawyer's handwriting, of their addition to his collection. They cooed at her from shriveled lips, cuddling up to her so that Crazy Susan was covered in a dry, dusty blanket of fragile skin and bones, forgiving Crazy Susan for dear Papa never letting her keep one of them for company in his slowly rotting tooth of a house because the Collection that they were part of came first and always…)

_When Crazy Susan was seventy, the developers came, driving out the whores, the pushers, and the dog fighters; replacing them with cyber cafes, wine bars, art galleries and studio lofts with high ceilings and higher rents._

_They resented dear Papa's house, which stood out like a rotting, jagged tooth in the smile of a supermodel amidst their upscale retail paradise._

_A lawyer was sent._

_Crazy Susan pushed a business card at him through the tarnished mail slot without ever speaking to him. On it was the name and phone number of her dear Papa's law firm._

_The lawyer came back to his clients with the appalling news that Crazy Susan was their landlady – the eyesore that was Crazy Susan and Crazy Susan's house would have to stay._

_And stay they did, deliberately overlooked by the cell-phone junkies and drivers of SUVs; a dirty wad of chewing gum on the face of the Mona Lisa._

Crazy Susan awoke a few days later, throat raw, but exultant: the babies had told her that she would have one more, one that even dear Papa couldn't take away from her.

How absurd, who ever heard of an old woman like her having a baby?

Regardless, Crazy Susan hummed a lullaby to herself as she picked up the strange, dead spidery creature that lay beside her on the floor of her dirty kitchen for cataloging. A baby would be nice; she could feel it kicking, just like all the others – wonderful!

It would keep her company – she would find and unlock the trunk of little dresses that dear Papa had taken away from her so many years ago when he declared her a woman too old for dolls. There would be bright colors, she would bake cookies, the servants would return and the house would be full of light.

And dear Papa, dear, dear Papa – his collection would go away, replaced by toys, and dolls, and music boxes, not broken ones like she'd added over the years, but new, bright with paint and ribbons.

Yes, a baby would be a lovely thing.

Crazy Susan dropped the now cataloged and tagged spidery dead thing into a kitchen drawer full of pickled centipedes and closed it with a smile on her face: the kicking within her was growing stronger, she cradled her swollen belly, eyes closed in ecstasy, soon, oh yes, soon!

Crazy Susan shook her head, there was work to be done: she tagged and cataloged the empty egg before eating all the canned goods she could find – she was, after all, eating for two…

Crazy Susan screamed, falling to her knees, toppling stacks of green bottles, which shattered on the floor around her, blood trickling from her mouth where she'd bitten through her tongue, clutching at her distended old belly…

Labor, that's what it was; you can't have a baby without labor… panting, Crazy Susan stiffly lowered herself to the floor.

Yes, that was it, it was coming… coming… coming… there was a tearing sound; blood now stained the cocooning layers of dear Mama and dear Papa's clothes…

Crazy Susan writhed, screaming, "Dear Papa, you can't have this one, this one is MINE!!!" as her ribs bulged before snapping outward with a sharp report.

Crazy Susan fell back among the rubbish of dear Papa's Collection as what emerged from Crazy Susan's body squealed and hissed. Half-blind with pain, she reached out to it, it was perfect and it was hers… hers, "Do you hear me? MINE!!!"

Laughing, Crazy Susan fell back among the broken bottles and stacks of newspapers, broken vases, and cracked china plates, screaming "MINE!!!" up at the mildewed ceiling as the child long denied her scuttled hissing down the dirty cellar stairs into the darkness, in a trail of old woman's blood.

_When Crazy Susan was dead, her house caught fire, the newspapers, the record albums, the old clothes, and the stuffed tiger's heads going up in one glorious cleansing burst amidst the weeds of a neglected yard._

_However, the world outside the burning shutters and rusty iron gate paid Crazy Susan's house no mind, being too busy with Crazy Susan's grandchildren to notice._


	3. Dynamite Belt

With a cautious clatter, two old ladies slowly hobbled down the middle of Wall Street, shadows long in the lateness of the day, heat boiling up off of the filthy asphalt pavement as they leaned on each other, walkers long-abandoned among the rubble and overturned cars.

"Well," Aoutef said in a high-pitched, cracked voice, "If the young ones won't do it, it's up to us, Goldie."

Goldie stumbled, swollen ankles barely able to support her, "I still don't know, I still… why ask me? You people do it all the time."

Aoutef leaned against the burned out shell of a city bus, trying to steady herself as Goldie clutched at her, "And what is that supposed to mean?"

Goldie held onto her long-time despised neighbor, panting, "I mean, Bethlehem, Tel-Aviv, boom, all that nonsense in the Holy Land, bang, arms and legs all over the place; filthy terrorists!"

"Freedom fighters!" Aoutef did a slow motion scramble, taking Goldie's hand in hers as the two little old ladies; Aoutef in her burqua, Goldie in her wedding dress, saved for the day she was to be buried long stored away in the back of a closet, negotiated themselves past an overturned Bradley, "Pfui, sooner or later you people will…" The little brown-skinned woman paused, sweat dripping off her nose, "Ohhhhhhhh, Goldie, I see it…"

They cowered in the sunset, trash and broken glass at their feet, hugging each other in determination and terror.

"Sun'll be down soon."

"That's when THEY come out…"

"Don't say it, Goldie, I can't stand…" Aoutef put one veined hand to her mouth, stifling a scream.

"Shhhhhh, Aoutef, don't be a silly. It's for the grandbabies we're doing this…"

Goldie squirmed, sweat oozing between her and one of the two dynamite belts that her neighbor's nephew Hossam'd left unwatched in the back seat of the taxi he'd driven before THEY had come last week, ruining everything.

This morning, Aoutef had approached her in the shelter in among the women, the children, the old, and the dying.

Her plan was simple. If the young men and women were out fighting, why not spare some of them? They were old, they'd lived, and everyone was needed.

Anyway, it was better than just SITTING there, waiting for THEM to break down the steel doors of the bank vault that had been converted into a safe haven, holes drilled for air, failing generators pumping in what fresh air they could…

Goldie, who had never gotten along with Aoutef, I mean, a burqua in New York? Feh! in the thirty years they'd shared adjoining apartment walls, agreed- slipping away together, creeping along the broken pavements, the shell holes, past bloated bodies, pausing to open cans of food that they'd found spilled out of shop windows onto the rubble-strewn sidewalks, dented, but still good, drinking water from puddles by broken water mains, avoiding places where entire blocks of buildings had been bombed in the early days of the attack – until they reached Wall Street where the biggest infestation had been cordoned of where they managed to slip past the sentry posts set up by surviving Crips and Bloods.

Huddled behind a mound of broken pavement beside her neighbor , as a gangbanger sauntered past, deadman switch rigged grenade in one hand, cell phone in the other, Goldie shook her head. Aoutef might be nuts, but she was right – things had become so UNTIDY since THEY came. At first the Government had sent in troops, but THEY swarmed over the tanks that rumbled through the city, dragging the men and women out of them and down under the street for Jehovah only knew what. So the planes had come, roaring low over the horizon, dropping loads of bombs– feh! No good, that! So the soldiers had left, putting up barricades, patrolling the edges of the city, shooting anybody who came out for fear that they were carrying… those horrible THINGS…

Inside them…

...leaving the old, the young, women, children, the unwanted, those who couldn't flee when it all started, trapped – this Goldie had heard on the little battery powered transistor radio she found in the front hall closet of her now abandoned apartment.

So now here she was, in the remains of the city that had seen her birth, Bat Mitzvah, her wedding, her first child, her second child, her Sol's funeral – with the neighbor who was always complaining about her cat peeing on her begonias to the landlord, about to take on the things that were killing her beloved New York.

Meshuggenah - all of it!

(But why sit and wait to be dragged down in a hole when you can do something, your own little mitzvah to the world, to the grandbabies whose tattered photos nestled safely in her handbag?)

"Wait, my feet..." Aoutef clutched Goldie's arm; the two little old ladies collapsed onto a heap of empty garbage cans, panting.

"Just a little further, and it won't matter any more." Goldie adjusted her veil, which was now red with brick dust, "Oy vey, what a day for such undertakings!" she blew her nose on the hankie she had worn tucked into her cleavage the day of her wedding. Her grandmother had brought it all the way from the Old Country. Aoutef held out one trembling swollen-knuckled brown hand; Goldie passed it over.

Aoutef dabbed her eyes, "Hossam, he says there's a big pool of diesel from where a truck was knocked over, it's a simple thing…"

From behind thick glasses, Goldie and her neighbor locked eyes, silently helping each other to their feet as the endless street faded into the blue of a New York summer twilight.

After a while, "Are you _sure_ this'll work?"

"My nephew's the best."

"Feh, if you say so…"

…

…

…

"Are you sure?

"Yes!"

…

…

…

"It's for the grandbabies. I've lived a good life."

From Aoutef's tattered burqua came a snort.

Goldie glared at her.

…

…

…

"I smell them, nasty dirty _THINGS_."

…

…

…

"I can't do this, Allah, I can't…"/"I can't do this, Jehovah, I can't…"

…

…

…

"_It's for the grandbabies."_

…

…

…marinated in diesel, the invader's nest stank, causing both old women to wheeze, "All we have to do is let them see us."

"Oh Aoutef, don't remind me!"

"Hossam put timers on these belts. Hold still Goldie while I turn yours on…"

"Ohhhh… Ohhhhhh… Aoutef… it's _THEM."_

…

("It's now or never.")

…

Two elderly neighbors clutched each other tight as Venus emerged overhead, the timers on their dynamite belts silently counting down beneath their loose clothing…

…

…

There was a rattle, and a clatter as they disentangled from each other long enough to take off their hearing aids and glasses, to shatter on the broken pavement…

…hunched, long-headed shapes shot out, grabbing them…

…

…

("Inshallah!")

…

…

…frail hands clutching at the night air…

("Israel!")

…

…

…skinny legs in torn flesh colored stockings feebly kicking…

…

…

…a few seconds later a Crip sentry paused in the midst of barricading himself in for the night, only to gape as a mushroom cloud of burning diesel drifted redly up into the sky, followed by a concussion that shattered what windows that were left to shatter…

…

…the battle of New York had begun.


	4. The Mathematics of Estrogen

It was, Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann's firm belief, all the old white guy partriarchalist establishment's fault.

Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann knew that it was a bunch of old white guy's fault because she'd seen the news broadcasts on her way from one protest (in favor of Native American rights) to another (protesting the traditional killing of whales from a traditional kayak with a traditional bone harpoon by Native Americans).

Anyway, something had told her that no, it wasn't supposed to be that way: had they greeted the invaders with open, gentle, Goddess arms, New York city would have become a feast of love, peace and justice, instead of the icky mess it had become – and she was the one to clean up the mess that the old white guys had made of it - she, Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann, vegan, pacifist, pantheist (except for Christians: Christians were evil because wasn't it Christians that like, burned witches, like a thousand years ago or something? All Christians, even the nice ones, deserved to… ummmmmm, disappear too, because, like, burning them back was just, well, like mean… or something like that. Them, and people who ate meat.), lover of the Goddess, political lesbian, and lifetime PETA member.

New York would become the feast of love, peace and justice that the Goddess intended – where two species of like mind, gentle beings from the stars and the Children of Isis in all her incarnations would mingle peacefully in a natural matriarchy and it would all be _fantabulous_.

So in between a vegan lunch conference/drum circle, an organic doobie-yoga session with her girlfriend (for some reason Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann could never actually get around to DOING it with Thunderwoman Twinovary Smith, she was all for girl on girl as it was the only truly equitable relationship that a girl could have as men were well, icky, demanding, and always telling you what to do…) and another drum circle out in People's Park, Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann announced her intentions to strike a blow at the restrictive, enslaving patriarchy and bring about a forever and ever and ever Eternal Matriarchy, and ummmm, who was with her?

Ummmm, in the end, like, six said they could like, do it - #7 couldn't get a babysitter, and anyway, her boyfriend AND her wife like almost went ballistic when she told them what she intended to do and like, well, what can you do??

And now all her sister-comarades had fallen by the wayside, brutally martyred by the persecuting vicious Fascist military industrial complex REPUBLICANS who didn't want anybody to know that they'd been picking on harmless little alien creatures by shooting anybody who tried to leave the downer that was New York…

Ummmm, well, actually, ummmmmmmmmm, it wasn't quite like that… the closest to martyrdom they got was a parking ticket from a fascist traffic cop for double parking Thunderwoman Twinovary Smith's moped out in front of Tattoo City when they all got matching tattoos on their ankles to show their unity before leaving San Francisco on the Greyhound (after the matriarchy came, buses would be outlawed in favor of earth-friendly transportation that ran on sunshine and spring water) Obstacles aside, Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann was utterly convinced that this time it would work: all eyes would be focused on Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann and her six Blessed Women, her Handmaidens...

And it wouldn't be like, ummmmm, Baghdad, where with a compassionate heart, she had gone to that poor, persecuted place, willing to sacrifice herself in the name of peace as a human shield. Never mind her gang rape by some of the peace-loving innocents she'd come to protect - il Dubya had obviously twisted those poor deluded Third World men's minds; so what if she'd strolled around a Muslim country in nothing but flip flops, a hemp halter top and shorts with her arms exposed and long blonde hair rippling loose in the desert wind without a male protector - it was her body and she could do with it as she liked – ennywho, nobody at the rave in Amsterdam a few days later noticed the giggle which escaped the newly bowlegged Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann as she sucked on a _fabulous_ joint before before openly weeping at the destruction of peaceful Baghdad by those nasty ol' Republicans live on the television screen by the DJ's stand... and it certainly wouldn't be like the time she'd been tossed out of the sacred space around Shiprock, New Mexico by the patriarchalist deluded Navajos – who if they weren't blinded by the white man, would see that Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann had every right to dance skyclad but for a Tweety Bird tattoo on her left butt cheek in honor of Hebe… because, like, ummmm, Estsan-ah-tlehay was just another facet of the Mother... or the time she was banned from Sea World when she dove into a dolphin tank to commune with her sisters…

No, ummmm, like, this time it would be different, like _reallyreallyreally_ different.

Still, cracks began to show: Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann's first companion on the journey was cast aside in Salt Lake City when she was caught eating a balony sandwich on Wonderbread, with, with, with MIRACLEWHIP??

Had it been organic tempeh cutlets on organic whole spelt slathered with tofu mayo, it wouldn't have mattered, but this was _Oscar Mayer_… so then there were five.

The second was cast aside in Pueblo when she discovered JESUS?? (To have sweet and total matriarchy, there must be unity. Jesus made for an unwelcome sixth of testosterome in the mathematics of estrogen.) so, five became four.

The third was cast aside at a convenience store outside of Boulder, when she loudly stated that tofu was disgusting and so were Boca Burgers, which made her cut, and she was going home and having pot roast with her grandmother… then there were three.

Meanwhile, the news was getting worse – patriarchalist forces were pulling back preparatory to a bombing of New York to contain and cover up their obvious mistake – attempting to stop the new Age of Aquarius, the time of the Goddess, the blessed matriarchy when all would be peace, love and justice and a time of really cool miracles… the second said, "What a crock of shit!" called her dad, and went home…

Good - unbelievers would only slow Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann and her faithful lover, Thunderwoman Twinovary Smith, down.

Thunderwoman Twinovary Smith abandoned Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann in favor of a really _femme_ femme in hot pink techno-dreads and a torn Hello Kitty t-shirt they met at a rave in Des Moines – "Cerise puts out, sweetie, you _don't_." was all Thunderwoman Twinovary Smith had to say on the matter - Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann was kinda-sorta relieved because as great as being munched felt, munching back was like, ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww…

Alone, a woman on a mission, Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann somehow made her way to New York against the flow of refugees and past the cordoning troops, poor deluded patriarchalist victims, trying to hold back the inevitable Goddess era that she, Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann, was going to midwife on their behalf…

So, anyway, despite all these ordeals and testings, Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann now stood in the middle of Park Avenue as the sun set, chakras aligned, stars likewise, henna on hands and face, skyclad to show her good intentions, singing the Indigo Girl's "Peace Tonight" offkey as a prelude to the birth of the New Dawn.

Dark outlines moved around her in the lengthening shadows as the sun kissed the horizon in a glorious, feminine, blaze of lavender-pink - the Goddess approved.

(Still, Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann couldn't help but notice how lumpy, how angular, how spiky those she had come to commune with looked… patriarchalist bulldoody!)

That's all it was. Patriarchalist bulldooddy ca-ca; she, Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann, was here to make up for the stupidity of the Establishment, the old white guy cabal, the warmakers, the…

(They smelled really bad, like hamburger left out on the counter for a week…)

"I come in the name of peace." Said Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann as the sun disappeared completely, leaving her alone in the corpse of New York City with some really alarming lumpy spiky things that smelled, like reallyreally bad…

The reallyreally alarming lumpy, spiky things that smelled reallyreally bad closed in on Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann… who put her hands in the shape of "perfection", closed her eyes while thinking beautiful thoughts about the imminent birth of Paradise and…

…

…

…anyway, it would have been interesting to hear what Eagle'scry Moonblossom Sacajawea Quan Yin Goldwomann had to say an hour later about peace, justice, the Goddess, and total matriarchy... only her mouth was clogged by the thick fleshy tube of a facehugger implanting an Alien fetus in her body cavity via her esophagus as she hung paralyzed, cocooned, and upside down in one of many of New York's now abandoned subway tunnels as the Queen of the colony, total matriarchy personified beneath a crown of black bone, muttered to herself, huge, extended abdomen producing yet another leathery, grey egg…


	5. Maggots

When Jimmy Spencer was six, while on the bus to school, he traded his lunch, pb&j, carrot sticks, and a Ho Ho in a brand-new Star Wars lunchbox, with fat 'ol Bobby Lecturn, five, for a stack of Batman comic books.

Traded wasn't exactly the word for it – Jimmy Spencer forgot and left C-3P0 and R2 next to the crying Bobby after popping him one when Bobby refused to be reasonable about the caped crusader.

The next morning Jimmy Spencer twinkled at the principal after Bobby Lecturn's parents called the school, complaining about Jimmy's sales approach. Miss Moorshead, the assistant principal, let him off with a warning that such things weren't nice and to go back to class.

At eight, Jimmy Spencer who never wore jeans and sneakers but pressed slacks and brown leather penny loafers and had his hair styled, never barbered, told all the girls in his class that he was going to give them all a present the next day.

The next day, Jimmy Spencer gave little rhinestone necklaces to five of them, somehow forgetting the remaining ten other little girls.

When asked by his teacher, who was now dealing with ten unhappy little girls, what was going on, Jimmy Spencer twinkled once more and said, "Oops, I forgot to tell everybody I was only giving presents to the _pretty_ girls in the class."

Jimmy Spencer's charm saved him from in-school suspension, but it didn't save him from having ten angry little girls waiting to push him face down into the mud puddle at the end of the playground, you know, the one by the swings that never seems to dry up even in summer?

They waited all day.

Well, in between recesses, anyway.

No Jimmy.

No mud

Too bad.

Jimmy Spencer never showed because he was half a state away drinking Creme de Menthe from the bottle in the back seat of his mom's silver Jaguar, which she got as part of the divorce settlement, heading for Danbury, CT and her new boyfriend's place.

And so Jimmy Spencer went, from high school (the best private) and on through Harvard (on scholarship) – leaving behind a trail of missing valuables, cribbed exams, abortions, and twinkling smiles – with blame shifted elsewhere and threatened lawsuits when the blame wouldn't shift… or at least conveniently go away.

There were three broken marriages, none of them Jimmy's (he had four) alimony payments (for children he wasn't raising) missing funds, and at least one hit and run incident that somehow, miraculously disappeared even if it dripped Long Island Iced Teas.

There were firings; somehow these always got swept under the rug so that after a brief sparkle of his million dollar smile and charming laugh, he'd get a new one at twice the price, generally in Sales – Jimmy Spencer could sell anything.

Sales was why he was in New York the night THEY erupted out of basements, subway tunnels, and sewers so that two days later New York was a wasteland cordoned off by the U.S. Army on one side and the U.S. Navy on the other, with Jimmy Spencer in the middle, cruising around with a tattooed gang banger in a huge white Cadillac with thousands of dollars worth of treasury bills, stolen jewelry, and an eclectic assortment of illegal substances in the back and the driver's baby momma, a hyperactive crack-whore named "Lil' Pebbles" and her skinny baby in the seat between them.

He'd been peddling stock shares in a new company designed to fail in six months during a sales meal at 21 – only to be interrupted during the desert course when THEY invited themselves in – tables overturning, screams, blood all over the place as the completely unexpected dragged Jimmy's customers down into the sewers and subway tunnels as he sensibly crawled away beneath the panicking herd until in the chaos of blood and neon in the street outside 21 somebody grabbed him, tossing him into the front seat of a pimped up Cadillac that was blaring out rap music loud enough to make the ears of anybody who survived the attack's ears bleed.

Then there was the stench.

The stench was no ordinary stench, but a mingling of dead mouse and Vicks Vap-O-Rub, which came from little bags, hung around Chuck-E's, the crack-whore's, the skinny baby's, and now Jimmy Spencer Spenser's, neck. There was a huge one duct-taped across the hood of the Caddie –– Chuck-E claimed it was juju his grandmother had taught him to make and wouldn't say what was in them, but whatever was in them kept THEM at bay.

In fact, not only did it keep THEM at bay, it made THEM squeal, twitch, and fall over, to curl up in lumpy black balls so that Chuck-E and Jimmy Spencer could walk among them and harvest the remains of New York at will as the Caddie thudded and shuddered nearby to Tupac Shakur's entire opus, including the bootleg cuts.

Worse, one of the speakers mounted in the trunk had blown so that there was a weird buzz to anything that came out of it. This didn't stop Chuck-E: when Jimmy Spencer brought this up, Chuck-E'd said through his diamond encrusted gold grillwork, "Shut th'fuck up, White-Bread, Tupac's the only real one there ever was."

Jimmy Spencer had picked himself up off of the slimy pavement of the Holland Tunnel where they'd been harvesting jewelry off of the cocooned dead and dying while THEY hissed and shuddered in clusters around them, spat out a capped tooth and knowing he was outclassed for the moment, satisfied himself by giving one of those football-shaped things that always came with the THEM a vicious kick.

The contents gurgled, the leathery outer casing split open, spilling one of those disgusting crab things out onto the filthy asphalt where it lay twitching on its back. Jimmy Spencer unzipped and pissed on it as Tupac ranted and rapped about whatever it was that Tupac ranted and rapped about at the top of his angry lungs, with the buzzing of the blown speaker dominating everything.

Today, a week later, was no different, except there was now a painful abscess where Jimmy's dental work had been caressed by Chuck-E's large beringed fist, the back seat was now so loaded with looted valuables that the back end of the car's frame scraped the pavement, the baby had stopped crying and lay there blankly staring up at nothing from its mother's arms, and the mother now had enough crack to keep herself happy enough not to care.

Tupac still howled and ranted from his CD tomb as the Caddie edged past abandoned tanks and overturned city busses and down into the Holland Tunnel –blown speaker buzzing away like a nest of discordant hornets.

Jimmy'd gotten pretty good at ransacking the dead and smashing jewelry store windows – if they were ever to get out of this little suburb of Hell, everything in the back seat of the Caddie, plus the other loads he and Chuck-E'd stashed around town was easily worth a couple cool mil; the thought of that couple cool mil made Jimmy Spencer decide that he couldn't wait any longer while using a pair of garden shears to remove the ring encrusted fingers of a woman who was still twitching beneath whatever it was that was gripping her face while standing on the vibrating roof of the caddie. One finger, two, three, all plopping into a bucket for later, too bad she wasn't dead – the ones that had started rotting were easier to loot.

Watching Chuck-E, Jimmy Spencer shifted to the next one, a man in a business suit, chest ruptured, guts ribboning from his body cavity – cigars, a gold lighter, and a Rolex watch, also gold... nice.

The crack-whore got out of the car to stretch her legs.

Jimmy Spencer paused, watching her squat and take a shit near one of the twitching aliens. She leaned back against one of THEM afterwards, soiled panties still around her ankles; leather mini-skirt hiked up around her thighs, and slowly, shakingly lit up another pipe, savoring the results with glassy eyes.

Hmmmmmm.

Tupac snarled and rapped in the background.

Chuck-E laughed, bellowing over his hero's ravings, "Yo, White Bread – ain't nobody gonna get rich standin' still!" He went back to prying open a brief case: deeds, stocks, bonds, contracts – useless, man, useless!

However… in the right hands they be worth plenny shizzle– Chuck-E slammed the sticky case shut and tossed it into the back seat while resettling the loaded 9mm Glock he kept stuffed down the front of his stained baggy trousers as he turned around.

Jimmy Spencer had never handled a gun before – why when you could just as easily get your way with a lawsuit? But after doing the numbers, he was willing to give it a try.

Jimmy Spencer motioned to Chuck-E, pointing up at the clot of suspended bodies he'd been looting.

Chuck-E yelled, "What?"

Jimmy Spencer motioned again, pretending to be excited.

Chuck-E scrambled up onto the roof of the Caddie, Jimmy Spencer gestured at one of the bodies, pretending he'd found something that would take both of them to loot.

His savior shoved past him, groping upwards, a little flashlight gripped in his grilled teeth.

Jimmy Spencer casually reached down, pulled the Glock out of the front of Chuck-E's trousers, removed the safety the way he'd seen Chuck-E do it whenever he felt like using those egg things for target practice, and as the gangsta looked down with a startled, "Huh?" pulled the trigger, sending a 9mm load point blank into Chuck-E's forehead, taking the back of Chuck-E's head with it.

Wide-eyed, Chuck-E fell over backwards, landing heavily upon the floor of the Holland Tunnel.

Tupac was so loud that the crack-whore didn't even notice what had happened; except for the kick from the gun going off, Jimmy Spencer barely even heard it.

Bang.

It had been that easy.

Bang.

That's all it took.

One little bang.

And now all this stuff was his, along with a bag of stinking juju-crap that kept THEM from putting him on a ceiling somewhere with one of those crab looking things on his face.

Jimmy Spencer opened the driver's side door and slid in, but not before booting the baby out onto the pavement where it landed, wailing feebly.

Not his problem - the baby's mother was too busy sucking on her pipe to notice what he'd done.

Jimmy Spencer paused in the middle of slipping the Caddie into reverse long enough to turn off the car's sound system, letting beautiful silence flood the stained leather interior before he threw every CD he could find out the window, not noticing that THEY were starting to uncoil up off of the ground.

He also didn't notice when the crack-whore, sunk in self-inflicted Blissville was dragged off, pipe dangling limply between her blistered lips.

Jimmy Spencer finally realized that something was wrong when the front of the Caddie dipped as one of THEM gracefully clambered up onto it, clawed feet sinking into the stinking juju bag.

Jimmy Spencer grinned at it through the windshield, pissing himself as he reached for the Glock where he'd dropped it on the passenger seat.

IT grinned back with both mouths, casually pushing its long seven-fingered hands through the safety glass of the windshield and gently taking Jimmy Spencer by the shoulders as the gun went off, filling the car with a roaring echo.

By the time the final gunshot faded, Jimmy Spencer and his harvester were long gone, far down into the bowels of the Holland Tunnel, leaving the Caddie to sit, engine slowly coming to a sputtering death as it ran out of gas, the headlights slowly fading into darkness.


	6. Mama

Charles "Stinky" Braun was used to people recoiling from him early in life: even as a baby he reeked of dead mouse no matter how often Missy, his mother, remembered to bathe him in between her own bouts of alcoholism and epilepsy – still, when she did, the stench he gave off wouldn't go away – even when masked beneath a layer of Baby Magic and cheap perfume.

The doctors at the free clinics told Missy that Stinky had PKU, a genetic disease that wouldn't allow his pale little rash-spattered body to process phenylalanine, a condition, if she didn't manage religiously, that would render him retarded.

This meant special, restricted diets for Stinky – which Missy remembered to follow as long as she was sober and paying attention – which wasn't often because when Missy was drunk, his stench wasn't as bad.

As a result, Missy Braun drank a lot.

Stinky's father? Well, he never complained – it's hard to complain about a bad smell when you weren't even there when the stink first came into the world.

Now and then the New York State Office of Children & Family Services would step in. Then he'd be known as Charles Braun: his diet would be monitored, the stink would die down, and his behavior would improve remarkably – but never his school-work.

Eventually Charles' mother would get out of rehab (or jail) and he would become "Stinky" once more as his diet went to Hell, taking him with it.

This went on for a long time with Stinky rotating in and out of the slammer once he was too old for foster care; somewhere along the way Missy just flat out disappeared.

Not that Stinky missed her all that much - why miss someone who, when she isn't passed out in front of the television with an empty vodka bottle tipped over beside her, who called you "Stinky" while lamenting that she'd ever had you in between slaps and cuddles?

As to friends and girlfriends, Stinky had none. The other bottom feeders he came into contact with while yo-yoing in and out of foster care and the streets were too busy avoiding his penetrating stench and accompanying seizures to notice that he could be a pretty decent guy if you let him.

Eventually Stinky's social worker, a kind woman who struggled to keep a straight face whenever he entered her office and always waited five minutes after his leaving to open her window and spray Lysol so that he never knew how badly his personal aroma affected her, had a bright idea: get Stinky a job with The New York Department of Sanitation or The New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Either way, she hoped that Charles would be able to make a decent living and nobody'd notice the aroma he gave off even when his diet was under control. So she pulled strings that were connected to other strings and so on and so forth.

The DEP won.

Ten years later Stinky, still known as "Stinky", was permenantly assigned to underground low-brainer tasks where his dullness and funky body odor wouldn't stir up trouble. He still didn't have any friends, but by this point, Stinky didn't care: he had a tiny one room apartment, money socked away for no particular reason, and seeing as he spent most of his time underground where the conditions he encountered smelled worse than he did – well, Hell, who cares?

But the lack of a girlfriend bothered Stinky. Magazines, Kleenex, and lotion bottles just weren't doing it for him any more in his 30s, and all but the worst crack-whores turned him down – the combination of barely controlled PKU and raw sewage was not conducive to business… shit man, even the bag-ladies who slept on the benches in Central Park when it was warm turned Stinky down when the weather started getting chilly, preferring rags and newspapers in the open to sharing a bed with him out of the cold.

Stinky's invisible life went this way until one afternoon after lunch, while under Broadway tracking down a persistent blockage, Stinky met _her_.

She was huge, towering over him high into the darkness, black bony crown overshadowing her long, narrow skull. Stinky dropped his tools, falling to his knees in adoration, mouth working silently as her bloated abdomen slowly extruded one leathery egg after another in the cold damp of New York's brick-concrete-steel intestines while her servants milled about her, grooming her, feeding her, moving her eggs to make room for more, pushing past Stinky where he knelt in dull open-mouthed wonder, hunched backs and long tails brushing against him as if he didn't exist.

Stinky rose, the light on his helmet bringing out glints in her water-beaded carapace which twinkled like stars. He ran his hands over her arms, her legs, her abdomen, standing on his toes to caress her massive jaws – she was beautiful!

Her crystalline fanged mouth opened, an inner one sliding out and investigating his hands, his face, before pulling back in, neatly sheathed in steel-hard armored jaws, mumbling contentedly to herself as more eggs fell from her body, to be collected by her many servants – sweet fuckin' Jeezus, she was more than beautiful!!

Stinky shed his coveralls, his clothes, his skivvies, his undershirt until he was only in his helmet and boots in a cold, wet damp temple where a Goddess rumbled her endless hymn to fertility – and with trembling reverence brought her a rat warm in his hands.

Her inner mouth reached out, blindly taking it from him; the terrified squeal of his offering ended with an abrupt crunch, warm blood spattered his face; a blessing from above as he came untouched standing within the shadow of her bloated magnificence… accepted at last, Missy Braun's unwanted son joined his Goddess in the darkness, echoing her deep song of contentment with a whistled one of his own even as he brought her dainties and cared for her myriad eggs alongside his blind siblings.


	7. Family Interlude

Two queens battled, mother grappling with daughter, arms and legs a tangle, teeth flashing, inner mouths snapping at each other in the cavern that was once Grand Central Station.

Hissing, they rolled, tearing off each other's limbs, acid blood eating holes in the once gleaming floors as the workers hovered at the edges, all work stopped as mother hurled daughter against the now resin coated walls and windows. Tail whipping, stinger sizzling through the air like a whipcrack, the daughter rebounded arms spread, catching the older in a death grip, toppling her into a mass of unhatched eggs, which burst, spilling their spidery contents across their path in a slippery, twitching mass.

Still the workers watched, lining the walls like statues, clinging to broken departure boards, paused amidst the cocoons, black, gleaming, motionless.

The older of the two swung her head, catching her daughter under the chin with the edge of her bony crown even as her daughter tore at her thorax and ragged abdomen.

Another spatter of acid smoked on the once polished floor in among the bones and remains of empty cocoons even as the workers watched, oily black statues in the faint glow coming from the blocked out windows high above, forever patient.

Headless, the daughter stumbled and fell, landing in a heap of legs and tail amidst the empty face-huggers, twitching.

The workers watched, hands still, tails coiled.

The matriarch stepped over the body of her child, one arm hanging by a single strand of tendon, head whipping back and forth, fangs bared, before stooping long enough to snatch up her challenger's head and crunching through the steel-hard chiton, swallowing the soft, buttery contents before rearing back, triumphant, hissing in among the smashed eggs as she tossed aside the empty skull.

The workers watched, hands still, tails coiled.

Tail swinging, she ripped off her damaged arm, tossing it aside to land bubbling amidst a heap of spilled baggage, reasserting her dominance amidst the bodies and the eggs.

The workers watched, hands still, tails coiled.

A smaller, queen, the patient one hurtled down from the ceiling in the gloom, landing atop her mother, driving her to her knees, spilling eggs even as she reared back, teeth gleaming faintly before biting through her mother's neck behind her massive bony crown.

The workers watched, hands still, tails coiled.

Her mother gave a spastic twitch, remaining legs shooting out in all directions, sending more luggage and eggs tumbling, tail going limp.

The patient one stepped off of her mother's body, hissing.

The workers began to move once more, picking up eggs, mending torn cocoons, feeding the newly emerged as their new queen began to spin for herself a cradle, abdomen and ovipositer ready to continue her mother's work.


	8. Lulubelle

**Traffic Jam**

At the age of 85, Sam Bedowski never expected to find himself tooling down the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge at high noon on Lulubelle, his Zip'r scooter, wearing nothing but a bathrobe, pajamas and slippers, gas can heavy across his lap, a bottle of Wild Turkey tucked down between him and one arm of Lulubelle, and a heap of canned goods and toilet paper in the front basket.

The fact that there was no traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge helped: what traffic there was lay flattened or pushed aside and empty with windshields smashed and dried bloodstains on the pavement as overhead seagulls circled, jostling for position on the Bridge's superstructure with New York's inevitable pigeons - who still crapped heedlessly on whatever it was that stood or lay beneath them despite the strangeness of it all.

Sam slowed, negotiating his way around two tipped over delivery trucks, only pausing in his trek to rummage through the canned goods which littered the cracked pavement around them. The other held week-old newspapers - not good for much except starting fires.

Sam knew all about fires.

Every afternoon around three since last Sunday he'd park Lulubelle out in the open, siphon gasoline from every gas tank he could reach, gather up any loose tires he could find, and after placing them on the pavement in a wide circle around him and dousing them with the gasoline, he'd drop a match on the whole mess and sit in his scooter watching the _things_ circle him until sunrise, leaving him to sleep it off until noon: head back, dentures out, bifocals pushed onto his forehead and hearing aid turned off while Lulubelle's battery recharged from the battery of whatever car he could pop the hood on until noon.

**Shitstorm**

Noon meant scrounging for more food and batteries while creeping towards the city limits at an agonizing top speed of 4.25 m.p.h…No, this was definitely _not_ the way Sam had planned to spend his retirement.

Hell, he hadn't planned on living any longer than Gracie, his wife since '41, after she died crying last year, unable to remember her own name much the less his. Figuring he was next, Sam'd sold what little he had left, moved into a Brooklyn nursing home and waited to die on Medicare's dime.

And waited.

And waited.

And _waited_ - surrounded by the stinking and the dying because the tenacity which got Sam through World War Two, Korea and the first bitter years of 'Nam until a mild heart attack forced him to retire from the U.S. Army Tank Corps wouldn't let him die, leaving him to watch "Jeopardy" in between endless games of pinochle with an equally endless parade of old men until last Thursday night when the shit hit the fan.

Sam had been in the crapper when the lights went out and the screams started.

He'd reached over and made sure the latch on his stall was secure, and slowly, painfully, raised his arthritic feet so that they rested on the edge of the john where he sat all night with only his old radium-faced watch for company waiting for the screams to end and the lights to come back on.

They never did.

**Berlin**

Eventually Sam risked leaving the crapper: clinging to the safety railings until he could hobble his way into the common room of the nursing home – stepping around bodies and tipped-over wheelchairs on the blood-sticky floor until he reached the common room where he found more bodies and the big television face down and smashed – terrorists?

But why the Hell would terrorists want to take out a nursing home?

Terrorists… terrorists went for big things, important things… like, well, the Twin Towers, but not nursing homes-

Arming himself with the biggest fire extinguisher he could carry, Sam slowly hobbled down to the lobby of the sunlit building where he'd left his scooter, Lulubelle, to recharge the night before, slippers crunching on broken glass and worse. After propping the handicapped door open with a bedpan, he rode Lulubelle out into the wreckage-strewn street, gaping in astonishment at a level of destruction he hadn't seen since Berlin in '45.

He met others: reeling, injured, shocked – but nobody could tell Sam what happened until after sundown when along with ten nuns and two transvestites, he barricaded himself in a blood-soaked city bus behind a ring of burning tires - s_on of a bitch_ but the _things_ that circled and slouched around the stinking blaze were ugly!

In between Hail Marys they managed to keep the fire going despite a light drizzle- which persisted until dawn when a group of firefighters loaded them onto the back of a hook and ladder truck, hauling them all to slightly more safety: a modified bank vault where after two nights huddled in the stifling heat and stench of the diesel powered generators pumping air into the vault, safe or not, Sam decided to strike out on his own for the edge of town.

**Rumbling Through Brooklyn**

It was Wednesday morning when after yet another night in his ring of fire, Sam paused while turning off his hearing aids… was that… tanks? It had to be!

Tanks!

Sam spent the rest of the day trying to reach where he heard what had to be tanks rumbling through Brooklyn before the sound of their engines and tracks faded off in the direction of the Brooklyn Bridge – before stopping to set up his usual nighttime parameter, this time lobbing broken bricks through his greasy stinking parameter at the _things_ which circled and hissed as he sat watching the sides of skyscrapers light up from muzzle-flash, the concussions a dull, delayed thud, the smell of high explosives on the wind… damn, how Sam wished those bricks were grenades!

By midnight, Sam was startled by a buzzing, whistling scream as a squadron of A-10 Warthogs snarled overhead, seemingly close enough to touch as what windows were left intact around him rattled. Seconds later the night sky over Manhattan lit up as a big portion of the famous skyline disappeared from the starlit horizon.

Sam paused in the middle of throwing bricks, took a pull from the bottle of Wild Turkey, and cheered - tears running down his face: good to know somebody still knew what to do, Goddammit!

(And oh sweet Jesus, why did he have to be so damned old? They were doing their part and here he sat…)

**Skating Rink**

It took Sam and Lulubelle three more days of careful trundling to reach the Brooklyn Bridge – spending his nights within a ring of burning tires, skipping his morning naps, and Jerry-rigging car batteries so that he could go farther than on his scooter battery even if the terminals smoked and stank. But by the time Sam got across the Bridge and made it to Fifth Avenue, it was all over: Sam found himself dodging bomb craters as he studied the track ruts gouged deep into the torn pavement – tanks, goddamned beautiful tanks - had been there, leaving behind a trail of dead _things_ in hardened pools of dissolved pavement, when all Sam could do was lob bricks at the damned _things_ from where he sat in Lulubelle one at a time.

Goddamned beautiful TANKS!

There were dead soldiers, of course, and there were dead tanks. But that's what tanks did, they fought until the last round was expended and then they would charge forward and crush until something stopped them – which had happened here – mangled _things_ clogged the half-melted tracks of mangled tank…

Lost in speculation, Sam trundled Lulubelle through the wreckage… and froze.

An M1A2 Abrams stood in what had once been the skating rink in front of the remains of the Rockefeller Center building, quietly rumbling to itself.

Sloppy! _Goddamn_ sloppy! You took care of your tank; you didn't leave it running and unbuttoned so that any passing Fritz, Akira, or Abdul could lob a grenade into the main hatch or drive off with it.

Furious, Sam powered Lulubelle towards the throbbing giant only to stop abruptly when the turret hatch slammed shut and the big gun swiveled in his direction.

Well lookie here, somebody's still home after all.

**T.U.S.K.**

Grinning around his dentures, Sam eased forward, worn scooter tires scrabbling against the broken ground. The tank stared him down, humming like an idling jet, "Those turbine engines sure do run quiet, don't they big girl?" Sam clicked his dentures thoughtfully, trundling closer before slowly easing himself to his feet on the broken pavement.

He hobbled forward, calling, "Hello in there…" You old fart, Sam growled silently, who the Hell can hear you in there all buttoned up? Did you forget everything you learned in Morocco? In Italy? In France? "

Cautiously Sam steadied himself against the monstrous rubber and steel tracks that loomed far over him before inching along, pausing to give admiring slaps to the bank of road wheels the tracks were wrapped 'round before rounding the back of the vehicle and laughing – yes indeedy - the design of these new tanks was damn weird, what with all that science fictiony ceramic and expended uranium armor crap, but one thing hadn't changed: there was a telephone box on the back, right where he remembered seeing it on a diagram in a _Popular Mechanics _article detailing the T.U.S.K. urban warfare package – just like old times!

Sam managed to pry open the unit that was part of the acid-spattered hull with his arthritic hands; yep, communications gear so that infantry could call in fire and the like, "Now where the Hell…" Sam fumbled around until a voice came out of a speaker, "Who the fuck are you?"

"Bedowski, MSgt. Sam Bedowski, U.S. Army Tank Corps, retired... and watch your language young man!"

The main turret hatch clanged open.

**Wild Turkey**

Sgt. Jim Gardner, 23, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa had been lying low ever since he'd escaped from an underground nest two hours before after awakening in the dark, plastered to what he later learned was the wall of a subway tunnel with a raw feeling in his throat and rope burns around his neck. He'd managed to shed his loose fatigues and Kevlar vest, which he'd left suspended stickily overhead. To his surprise, the _things_ that put him there ignored him as he stumbled his way up the steep concrete steps towards daylight.

Disoriented, he'd wandered the rubble-strewn streets until he'd found his tank, empty in the middle of the skating rink, the remaining three-crew members missing.

The tank's communication package was toast; something had eaten into it, and his cell phone was back in his abandoned trousers. Worse, Jim had the feeling that something was really, really fuckin' wrong: something was moving around inside him like his sister's baby did before her water broke during Christmas dinner last year…

Sam, who'd witnessed the messy aftermath of what happened to anybody who felt something moving around inside of them that _wasn't_ a baby, pulled the half-empty bottle of warm Wild Turkey out of his bathrobe pocket and handed it to Gardner.

Gardner took his time - only coming up for air to stop the nosebleed, which suddenly gushed down his face, staining his issue undershirt.

**Rope Burns**

Undershirt pressed to his nose, Gardner continued: thousands of refugees had been questioned, but their accounts didn't make any sense, leaving everybody with hatches open and eyes peeled so that when the enemy came boiling out of the sewers and subway tunnels after sundown with no warning from their infrared gear, it became a total cluster fuck - the last thing he remembered was being dragged out of the turret and then waking up plastered to a subway wall.

What happened to the rest of his crew, Jim didn't want to know.

Gardner drained the rest of the bottle, rope-burned throat working hard and slow before tossing the bottle over the side. He coughed, exclaiming, "Shit man, not again!!!"

Sam waited for Gardner to stop a second, violent nosebleed before telling the younger man what he'd seen since he'd been trapped in the nursing home crapper, watching the thing inside Gardner's belly shift and push beneath his blood-stained undershirt.

**Once Upon A Time**

Gardner paused to cough while refueling the Abrams from an abandoned fuel truck, before telling Sam what he'd planned: once refueled, he'd return to the subway station and fire as many live rounds down the hole it as possible before sundown – did Sam want to go along for the ride?

Sam nodded wordlessly in the middle of pulling on a borrowed uniform from the rear baggage rack so that by five in the afternoon they were ready to move out with Gardner dozing in his underpants and boots in the open turret hatch as Sam tentatively steered the Abrams around the wreckage of her sisters, Lulubelle abandoned far behind them.

After a while Sam ventured, "This beast got a name?"

A little static, coughing, and then, "No, should it?"

Sam cackled, shaking his head as he let the Abrams show him how she liked it, "Son, let me tell you a story…"

"**Thunderstruck, my ass!"**

After pushing through masses of burned out cars and bumping over curbs, the subway station eventually came into view through the periscope in front of him. Sam brought Lulubelle to a clumsy standstill and hailed Gardner through his helmet microphone, "You ready?"

Gardner coughed before ordering them to top of the stairs. Sam then slowly, painfully pulled himself out of Lulubelle's forward hatch, slamming it shut behind him before climbing with Gardner's help to where the loader should have been stationed.

It had been a while, but Sam had followed the new tanks as avidly as any NASCAR fan would a favorite driver – shells were stored here, the breech of the main gun was here – exactly where the diagrams in the magazine articles he hoarded in his room said they'd be – Sam nearly dropped the heavy first round twice before he was able to slide it home.

By now it was getting dark - the _things_ that besieged Sam night after night now swarmed in the shadows of the underground station only a few yards from the Abrams' hull.

Gardner hawked, spitting blood and snot over the side, before spraying a few 50mm rounds downstairs – _they_ retreated, screeching.

"Tunes… Tunes…" Eyes closed, Gardner mumbled as he flipped a switch- "Need tunes- ain't right without tunes."

A god-awful blast of sonic torture roared through the cabin.

Sam squawked, "What the hell is that shit???"

"AC/DC, gramps!" Gardner laughed, gums bleeding. "Thunderstruck."

"Thunderstruck, my ass!" Sam grumbled as he turned down his hearing aid – it was hardly Glen Miller's "In the Mood," but what the Hell! There was a sudden rocking motion as the concrete steps under Lulubelle's tracks began crumbling beneath her massive weight. Sam steadied himself, slammed the breech shut, and pulled the lever beside it.

Lulubelle's engine rose to a piercing whine, turret angling downwards before the main gun went off with a roar, drowning out AC/DC, causing her to rock back on her tracks, the main gun kicking back into the cabin with killing speed from the recoil, sending Sam sprawling - "Fuckin' A!" Gardner whooped over Sam's helmet microphone where he now half-sat half-lay against Lulubelle's magazine.

Sam spat out the remains of his dentures, straightened his bifocals and checked a nearby screen as he slowly stood up: the entrance of the subway station was collapsed in a cloud of dust and smoke stained red by the sunset - "Fuckin' A, oh yeah, fuckin'A-B-C-D all the way down to Z!" came over his headset.

"Drop another one?" Sam asked, his mouth full of mush.

There was a long silence and then, "Yeah – wanna be sure we own this puppy!"

Sam clanged another round into the breech, slammed the door shut behind it and sat down on the steel deck, clear of the back end of the main gun before reaching up to pull the lever beside it.

Lulubelle rocked once more as a second cloud of flame and smoke exploded out of the barrel.

Sam closed his eyes, counted to three and stood up slowly, feet and back pure agony as he pulled his way up to where Gardner now sat, booted feet dangling over the side, watching the sun kiss the horizon.

**Labor Pains**

Sam froze in the middle of pulling himself up the turret to join Gardner as the man fell over backwards to land screaming on the broken sidewalk, arms and legs flailing, chest bulging outwards as with a bloody explosion mercifully drowned out by the tank's engine and the howls of some tone deaf Aussie, the _thing_ Gardner's chest emerged…

"**Son of a bitch!"**

Arthritis forgotten, all but fell onto Lulubelle's forward hatch, yanked it open, and scrambled into the steering compartment before running her over Gardner's body and the thing it'd birthed… over and over again until Sam noticed that he'd over-steered in his panic when he and Gardner's, no _his_ tank began sliding backwards down the remains of the steps… son of a bitch!

Wheezing, Sam sat in the gloom, hands at his chest, readouts flickering across his face, engine idling… Lulubelle rocked unevenly, sliding back even further. Sam caught his breath and stood on it in an attempt to power her out of the remains of the subway station, only to meet resistance… what the Hell?

Sam pushed harder – Lulubelle's engine screamed as he slowly forced her up and out into the open. Then she rocked once more.

Again, what the-?

Sam screamed as something smashed through the narrow porthole in front of him.

Lulubelle reflected his panic, turret whipping first left and then right as her tracks shot the whole works forward and sideways into a pile of mangled cars.

Whatever it was, withdrew its hand abruptly.

Sitting in a pool of his own piss, Sam took a deep breath - sweet Jesus… only to cower in his safety harness as the huge seven-fingered metallic-black hand returned, groping towards him through the broken glass, brushing against his face, knocking off his helmet.

Sam sent Lulubelle shooting backwards, narrowly avoiding the crater that was now the subway station and another heap of cars, only to slam on her brakes. The tank shifted upwards - the hand disappeared. Sam eyeballed the periscopes and about pissed himself again.

**Shit Creek**

What pulled itself to its many feet front of him was easily twenty feet tall, bony head jagged against the rising moon. Sam sent Lulubelle rapidly backwards into a ragged U-turn, leaving whatever the Hell _it_ was behind, only in the rear screens he caught a glimpse of it running after him, easily clearing the rubble, head lowered…

Sam cautiously slowed Lulubelle to a halt.

The enemy paused, six legs or more settling in the moonlit wasteland surrounding the battered tower of the Empire State Building.

Sam goosed Lulubelle forward.

The enemy edged backwards, just a little.

Sam goosed her again.

This time the enemy scuttled sideways, massive head turned in his direction as he stood on it, hurtling the Abrams right at the damned _thing_, only to send Lulubelle skidding sideways so that the main gun caught it broadside as a sharp pain shot down Sam's right arm.

Main gun now hopelessly bent, Sam eased Lulubelle backwards, grinning toothlessly as the thing got up slowly– gotcha, you bastard, it was the Battle of the Bulge all over again: a German Panzer against a badly damaged Sherman named _Lulubelle_ - Sam stared it down, readying himself…

**Lulubelle**

Limping, the _thing_ charged headlong at Sam; he revved Lulubelle's engine, fuel indicator sliding rapidly into danger as he met the _thing_ head on; the shock of impact pushing him backwards in the driver's seat.

_Lulubelle, Sam's first tank, and the Panzer had played hide and seek amidst the blinding snow and burning wreckage, treads rattling against the frozen earth, Lulubelle down to one shell…_

Sam buckled gasping- shaking his head to free it of the pain now radiating from his chest, sweat blinding him. The tank rocked again as the _thing_ atop it scrambled for purchase. He spun Lulubelle on her tracks, but his attacker clung fast.

_The Panzer commander was good. Damned good. But Lulubelle's crew was desperate._

With a scream of metal, the main turret hatch gave way. Sam slammed on the brakes again, gasping. The _thing_ flew off - biting through his lower lip, Sam sent Lulubelle hurtling at his enemy, squarely driving over it with both tracks.

It got up again, more slowly this time.

_Sometimes desperation trumps superiority._

It leapt, grappling with Sam's tank, sending the two of them crashing blindly down the remains of Fifth Avenue, fuel rapidly dwindling.

_Somehow Sam and the first Lulubelle's crew found themselves behind the better of the two tanks..._

The _thing_ held on, oozing from where the tank's weight had cracked its armor, acid eating through the outer layers of the hull, causing shorts…

_He'd ordered his loader to slam their last shell home._

Lulubelle's acid damaged treads scrabbled and broke, leaving her road wheels spinning for purchase.

_Lulubelle played dead as blowing snow hissed against her battered steel hull somewhere in Belgium…_

Acid ate into Lulubelle's fuel tank and electronics - Sam's chest felt like it was going to burst as he barely managed to steer what was left of Lulubelle ground to a halt within sight of the Brooklyn bridge, fire spreading into her rear magazine…

_A much younger Sam took his time, waiting for the Panzer to angle itself just right…_

The hand groped towards Sam once more through the broken porthole. Sam gritted his teeth, trying not to scream from the pain in his heart, sweat-glazed face lit by the sparking electronics that had once been Lulubelle's eyes and ears.

_He gave the order. The first Lulubelle's last round went screaming down the barrel…_

There was a loud explosion as Lulubelle's rear magazine blew out backwards, followed by the fuel tank, taking the enemy with it in a deadly fireball.

…_the shell hit the Panzer squarely in the ass, sending it up in a burst of hot metal and burning diesel which burned for three days amidst the blowing snows of December._

Eyes closed, head slowly tilting forward, Sam hung in his safety harness, smiling serenely as flames engulfed the remains of Lulubelle.


	9. Obsidian

1.

When at the age of 18 "Scorch" Jones was barred from joining the New York Fire Department, it wasn't because of his:

a. race (human,)

b. height (5'1/2",)

c. weight (280 pounds), religion (don't ask) or,

d. the fact that he was functionally illiterate.

No.

It was worse - it was Scorch's mind - there was something about it which made Scorch's screening interviewers uncomfortable.

This (coupled with a juvenile record of repeated arson,) was enough to keep Mr. Jones out of any and all fire stations in New York on a professional basis.

Period.

This minor setback didn't stop Scorch from still being one of the FDNY's biggest fans – he owned badges and other memorabilia dating back to the first fire departments in the city as well as an entire collection of photos that he'd taken himself of New York's firefighters on the job – and even more of just the fires themselves.

_Plenty_ more.

Scorch, you see, was a connoisseur - something which began when Scorch was ten.

While Scorch's Momma fought with some dude who might have been his father over who spent Momma's back money, Scorch hung open-mouthed out of one of the fly-specked front windows of the Bed-Stuy brownstone Momma rented a one room apartment in, watching an identical building across the street burn to the ground.

Faaaaaaaaaaan-TASTIC!

While Poppa broke Momma's nose, a blissful Scorch watched a team of firefighters wrestle with a hose as another team pulled people, some still in their pajamas, out of the building just before the roof collapsed with a roar - way better'n t.v., (which was busted-up 'cause Poppa kicked it in last week - he thought the bro readin' the news was a cop and didn't like the way he be lookin' at him.)

Eventually the blaze was subdued, and truck-by-truck, the firefighters drove away while Scorch's Momma lay sobbing on the dirty linoleum of their little kitchen, her nose a bloody pulp…

…Scorch couldn't wait to see the firefighters again.

So, later that afternoon, as his parents resumed their argument, the usual shit about Momma handing over the money she'd got walking the street the night before, Scorch took Momma's lighter, a powerful "no-no", and set fire to the couch just to see if the firemen would come back.

Sure enough, the firefighters did; which was all very exciting except for the little problem with the dude who may or might not have been Scorch's Poppa dying of smoke inhalation, but seeing as Poppa spent most of his time shooting up when he wasn't hitting Momma (or Scorch), Poppa was little or no loss compared to the excitement of having firefighters use an axe to break down the door.

Even better was getting to sit in the cab of one of the trucks wrapped in a clean blanket hugging a brand-new teddy bear while Momma got driven off in an ambulance for third degree burns to her hands, face, and chest, as well as a broken nose.

Yeah.

Settin' fires.

Settin' fires got you STUFF!

Settin' fires got you NOTICED!

Oh yeah, settin' fires was EASY - Scorch liked EASY!!!

By the time Scorch was twelve, he could set a fire just about anywhere and avoid detection, which was the best part of the game.

Trash cans, dumpsters, warehouses, houses, cars, busses, and once a patrol car… with the cops still in it.

This, Scorch had to admit, had been a major coup, almost as good as the time he'd incinerated a part of Juvenile which he'd been assured was impossible to set fire to.

Anyway… Scorch's biggest fire up until now had been the night _They_ came boiling out of the subway tunnels and manhole covers – but Scorch , freshly rejected from Fire Academy, hadn't noticed because of the fire…

…which he'd planned down to the finest detail – from to the balloons full of gasoline in the basement of the oldest warehouse on the block and the kitchen-timer flour bombs randomly placed in the attics – Scorch intended to sit in the middle of the entire burning warehouse block on a folding chair drinking beer, while watching the firefighters deal with the wonderful gift he'd given them… and masturbating.

Fire was no good without masturbating.

Scorch came, but the firefighters never did – they were too busy dealing with something that New York, for all her experience of just about damn near everything be it real life (9-11) or in the movies (giant gorillas and radioactive lizards) had never experienced; so that when Scorch waddled out of the ruins at sunrise, favorite folding chair in tow, all he found was a city rapidly emptying of everyone that could still flee.

…

…

…something bigger than Scorch's fire had stolen Scorch's thunder…

…

… DAMN!!!

Whatever that something _was_, it had to PAY.

And PAY it did – once Scorch figured out whom to blame, that is – which wasn't hard.

It was all _their_ fault.

_They_, for lack of any other name, were invincible and unstoppable, but _they_ had issues with fire.

And, as stated earlier, so did Scorch.

With no restraints, like Momma who'd discovered religion while recovering from her burns, Scorch did as any other master artist would: he practiced his art unfettered; discovering that if he found a nest of _them _in the morning, he could take his time pumping gasoline, or whatever else was handy, down into _their_ hiding place, drop a Moltov cocktail in at sunset, and sit there in the twilight surrounded by female admirers, mostly women who never would have given Scorch a thing unless he paid before all this started, and listen to the dull thud of concussion as smoke, and burning…

…burning…

…_things_ came pouring out into the blue of twilight in gouts of broken glass and shattered pavement while his least favorite girls would spray them down with diesel from home-made flamethrowers, making _them_ smoke and stink all the more.

It was… beautiful.

_Extremely_.

BEAUTIFUL.

So BEAUTIFUL in fact that Scorch and his growing harem, now aboard a commandeered fire engine, patrolled the empty neighborhoods, watching the few surviving dogs they'd found for any signs that more of _them_ were lurking in the sewers below, ripe for burning.

Burning _them_ was more fun than setting rats on fire and letting them go to see how much damage they'd cause before falling over dead.

Much, much better.

Oh yeah, oh YEAH!

Scorch's art left a blackened trail across the carcass of New York City, which caught the attention of someone…

2.

…_someone who'd been sent to assess the damage an unplanned release of them could cause and what, if anything, should be done about it._

_Scorch , as Scorch , was no trophy._

_He was slow, fat, and not much of a challenge._

_A bottom-feeder._

_However, Scorch the artist, was a trophy worth having._

3.

At five foot ten and a half, Tanqueray Burnsuck, an unusually stunning byproduct of white trash genetics and a random assortment of Midwestern trailer parks was tall enough to qualify to get into the Rockettes after a long, profitable career as a high school cheerleader followed by a dance scholarship at some small state-run Midwestern university somewhere out where the forested hills of the East collided with the endless plains of the true West.

By the time she was fired for having too much personality, Tanqueray (named after her mother's favorite gin) had already landed her first Fortune 500 husband. Seeing as she was well on her way to being a professional "trophy wife", the pink slipping of a former cheerleader with doublewide roots barely registered as she was too busy being fitted for a haute couture wedding gown for the big day…

…at a design house in Paris where the client list included the wives and daughters of anybody who was anybody in Saudi Arabia as well as the British Royal family…

…followed six months later by a funeral, seeing as the groom had been ninety-six at the time; there's only so much fun a man that age can have before something gives out…

…leaving Tanqueray, now "Honoria" sitting pretty and already entertaining several intriguing offers of merger from several intriguingly wealthy men…

…with her now-deceased husband's family out in the cold as far as the estate was concerned – never mind the bothersome lawsuits from that quarter – Honoria's mamma, wherever she may have been back somewhere in the Midwest, had taught her babygirl well: always get it right and tight the first time and fuck the rest.

By the time Honoria was forty, she had been through a large portion of the East Coast's and some of the West Coast's best and brightest with little or no public scandal – she always got it right and tight, fuck the rest, never going for celebrities, instead preferring money so old and ripe that it easily fell into her waiting lap by sticking with men you never heard of in the _Enquirer_ –men so rich they were invisible.

Invisible was good.

Invisible got you Paris originals and diamonds the size of the Ritz.

Honoria liked diamonds and owned a portion of Paris (and London, Rio, Vegas, New York, and L.A., etc.) thanks to husband number five…

Or was that husband number six?

Not that it mattered- Honoria's name was in the paperwork somewhere, which was exactly how Honoria liked it (after all, a girl must have a hobby).

Before you get me wrong, Honoria was no poisoner, no husbandicide, nothing as tacky and dangerous as that.

No, she was incredibly good, no, ruthless at getting the husband she wanted – and good at being her mother's daughter even if mamma, a 300 pound unlicensed hairdresser, hadn't very good at being Honoria's mamma.

No, it was all legal, all above board – none of that Anna Nichole Smith-style business, if you know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, as far as husbands went, in return for you, you got Honoria on your arm: tall, blonde, poised, and botoxed to the gills in a tasteful manner - you'd be surprised at how many men of a certain stature needed a Honoria on their arm to complete the "look" – and oh, by the way, did you know Honoria was a lesbian?

Honoria could care less about gay rights, gay marriage, _Fried Green Tomatoes, Brokeback Mountain, _the environment, The Indigo Girls, K.D. Lang, Ellen DeGeneris, meat-is-murder, Amnesty International, A.I.D.s, activism, and/or reproductive rights. Plaid flannel shirts and hiking boots were out of the question as were Leatherman tools (too close to her childhood.) and anything to do with Wicca. Patchouli made her gag – anyway, as stated earlier Honoria owned a goodly chunk of Paris and all the perks that went with ownership - why should she have to smell something ground out of some roadside tropical weed that and sold by the ounce in some tacky little head-shop when she could have the real deal? Not to mention, all four of Honoria's stepfathers religiously drenched themselves with the stuff every November just before they went out drinking beer… I mean, deer spotlighting, in the nearest State-run Natural Area – how gauche!)

No, none of this mattered because as long as Honoria got what was Honoria's, the rest could all hang – instead, keeping a stable of human Marshmallow Peeps, sweet young things with not much in the way of brains or ambition who were easily rotated out of the picture should they ever develop one or both…

As to Honoria's many husbands, you'd be surprised at how many men will put up with this sort of thing just so long as they either a.) don't see it or b.) are allowed to watch.

So, how did Honoria Derby, forty-two, tastefully dressed, well connected, and as stated earlier, wind up point-man on a makeshift fire team, dark roots showing and armed with an equally makeshift flamethrower when she wasn't going down on the obese, twenty-something asshole with a complexion like a cheap pizza wearing a makeshift firefighter's rig who kept the 'throwers going and the goodies coming?

Easy.

The night whatever _they_ were boiled up uninvited out of New York's sewers and began randomly culling the Big Apple's human herd, Honoria was presiding over a dinner party at _Jean Georges_ with its exclusive view of Central Park in honor of her latest husband's sixty-fifth birthday.

As the _things_ had come bounding and drooling through the dining room, knocking over tables and dragging off the waiters as well as the waitees, Honoria resorted to the same tactics that got her to the place she was: she calmly steered her current girlfriend, some lissome redhead eighteen year old Bryn Mawyr liberal arts major, into the path of an attacking _thing_, ducked under the table, shoved her husband into the path of another, followed by at least two of his business associates and her in-laws, before taking refuge in the kitchen beneath one of the big gas ranges until the screams died down and the footsteps went away while the tuna-wasabi won-tons shriveled and the rustic apple-and-pear streusel tarts burned unattended.

What Honoria found the next day was the physical equivalent of what she regularly did to the families of her deceased husbands on paper – this she could handle.

What Honoria _couldn't_ handle was being alone after sundown the same day so she took refuge with a pocket of survivors, always making sure there were at least two warm bodies between her and whatever stalked them through the night.

This would not do.

Before sundown the next day, Honoria found herself in the entourage of some disgusting little toad of a man – and not on top for once.

Still, any port in a storm, and the balls that got Honoria Darby, nee Tanqueray Burnsuck the slot as head cheerleader in any school she washed up in and then later into the beds and bank accounts of the Fortune 500, would eventually prevail.

All it took was a bit of patience - and Scorch, or whatever his name was, would be eating out of her hand.

Or dead.

4.

_This one was interesting, the Hish observer who'd marked Scorch as a potential trophy in her exploration and evaluation of the human hive which had been overrun, noted._

_Another trophy, except that she was pregnant._

_The fecund were off limits, no matter how tempting._

_Pregnant females contributed to overall herd growth – no use in sacrificing the future on the altar of the gods of temporary gratification even if the Matriarchs back on the home-world had decided that after a few more planetary cycles this entire unplanned but useful hunting ground would be terminated in order to preserve the populations of the surrounding human communities for later development..._

_Too bad; it would have been interesting to see how this tall female who led every charge against the prey after sundown while the overweight herd male sat watching, surrounded by his equally pregnant female attendants, would have fared._

5.

Scorch was not happy.

Not in the least.

Every night his least favorite girls got better and better at fending _them_ off, more organized, more graceful – and they were beginning to demand better equipment, too.

This wasn't the problem: Scorch was glad to watch them drill in the afternoons as he rigged and checked the equipment for the night's hunt, knowing that they were all doing it for _him_.

No, that wasn't the problem.

_She_ was the problem.

Problem was, she never did anything that Scorch could put a pudgy soot-smeared finger on that could be clearly identified as a problem.

Because of her, the outer ring of women and girls he'd taken under his protection had increased in efficiency – drilling and practicing for six hours every day so that they moved like a highly efficient squad of executioners, herding burning _things_ into their midst before eliminating them entirely.

Because of _her_, they had better places to sleep.

And things to eat.

And drink.

She'd send a squad out after mop-up and in an hour or two there would be crates of prime goodies: M&Ms, Doritos, flats of Coke, Full Bull Marlborough, you name it, which he doled out to his favorites after he'd had his fill; leaving the less tempting remainders of bread, canned meat, vegetables and fish to her and his least favorites.

They'd also bring back batteries, lengths of copper wire, bags of flour, and barrels of diesel fuel and the occasional hot-wired truck loaded down with propane, acetylene, and oxygen tanks. Now and then there would be blasting caps and illegal stashes of napalm and other nasties – all highly useful, and nothing that Scorch could turn down or condemn _her_ for.

No, it wasn't that, and it wasn't the mind-blowing things she did to him the day he called her to the cab of his fire engine so he could try her out like the new toy she was.

Close-up, she was old enough to be Scorch's mother, but sex was sex.

No, it was the fact that even though she'd cooed over Scorch afterward the way he liked it, telling him he was wonderful, a big stud, etc. he'd looked into her eyes and realized that though her mouth was telling him what he wanted to hear, her eyes were assessing him like a piece of meat at the butcher's counter he once worked at.

And those eyes found him… wanting.

Not having the courage to kill her outright, Scorch banished her to the outer ring of his harem, hoping that the _things_ she hunted every night would do the job for him even as he refined and improved her weapons at her honeyed request or watching her with a hard-on as she directed his other least favorites through a synchronized dance of fire and death.

As for Tanqueray Burnsuck, it was shooting rats with one of her little brother's .22s in the town landfill all over again – one of the few joys of her hardscrabble trailerpark childhood. Scorch would blow them screaming out into the open, limping and burning from a diesel douche or a generous application of blasting caps wrapped around a propane tank or six – Tanqueray and her girls would finish the job.

Tonight was no different. As usual, the fat little fuck would sit jacking off, surrounded by his favorites, all showing pregnancies, while she and the rest did all the work.

Tanqueray shifted her backpack arrangement of pressurized fuel tanks, gave Tami and Michelle a nod that was passed around the surrounding outward facing ring of women as they braced themselves for the pavement shaking explosion that would send their prey blindly hissing into the last light of the day.

3…

2…

1…

…crump.

Tanqueray gave another nod and they lit their pilot lights – the first wave from this evening's piddly little nest would be coming any second as smoke and dust filled the air.

A smaller worker-type came screeching out into the open. Tami's team moved in, flaming it until it stopped moving, one of them stabbing it repeatedly with a glass-tipped pool cue coated in liquid rubber until its acid blood spattered the broken pavement before moving on to the next one, pinning it up against a building with long inner tube wrapped poles so that Michelle's team could finish it off with quick streams of burning diesel.

Team one and two occupied, Tanqueray gave a loud whistle - teams three and four moved into position – larger warriors came staggering and limping out, dragging shattered limbs but still game even as they bled to death in pools of dissolving asphalt.

She paused to light a Full Bull from her own pilot light – routine, no problem, the new modifications she'd sweet-talked Scorch out of were just what were needed – and then dropped her cigarette as the hive queen rose out of the rubble of the building they'd just blown the doors off of.

The bitch was huge, even if half of her shielding crown of bone had been ripped off by the explosion, dragging her torn abdomen and the stumps of her back legs behind her - screaming like an out of control freight train.

Tanqueray grinned, waving off her team leaders: this one was hers, all hers, and pulled the trigger on her flame-thrower.

Click.

Shit.

Scorch grinned, leaning forward in his lawn chair – it had been easy to fix things so that the feeder valve would only give the bare minimum until it was too late.

This was fun.

Tanqueray pulled the trigger again.

Click.

No time for swearing, Tanqueray threw herself flat as the burning queen thundered blindly over her, acid raining down, barely missing her.

The former trophy wife pulled herself to her feet just in time to see the queen bear down on Scorch, his favorites scattering in all directions screaming, the fun over.

Scorch stumbled backwards, tripping over the lawn chair and somehow wedging himself beneath his beloved fire engine, the queen scrabbling at him, head slamming repeadedly against the three-inch thick armor plated sides of the engine.

"Mother." Tanqueray said, "Fucker." as she retrieved her miraculously preserved pack of Full Bulls from the mess the queen had left behind and lit one from the flaming carapace of a dead _thing_. The remaining team members surrounded her warily, one eye on the last moments of Scorch, the other peeled for more surviving _things_.

Tanqueray then said, "What the…?" as the dying queen collapsed in a flaming heap beside the fire engine and Scorch, his clothes torn and smoking, pulled himself out from under the battered vehicle and staggered towards them.

Well, sometimes you have to take things into your own hands: Tanqueray, or was it Honoria? took a working flamethrower from one of her girls tested it, and then leveled the sooty nozzle at Scorch.

Scorch looked down the barrel of his own creation and realized that the only thing he'd done wrong was not to kill this least favorite of his women the moment he first saw her…

6.

_...the recall finally came; the Hish observer regretfully rose from her crouch on the roof of a nearby warehouse where she'd been watching Scorch's latest masterpiece._

_The tall human female now had the barrel of her improvised weapon pointed at the Hish matriarch's trophy._

_Rather than see a perfectly good trophy go up in flames, she flashed from her post and punched one large fist through Scorch's sternum, grabbing his spine and giving a practiced upwards jerk, sending his skull through the top of his scalp and into open air before he even had a chance to scream._

_She held up her trophy in the dying light of day, Scorch's body falling to the ground likes an inner tube full of sand, expecting the remaining human females to scatter._

_They didn't._

7.

Tanqueray had seen an awful lot lately: the sight of a dread-locked and masked tall… man? Woman? Ripping her enemy's spine and skull from his body the same way her mamma would a catfish's after a day's fishing was just one more – if nothing else, whoever it was saved her the trouble of doing it herself.

She advanced, head to one side, Full Bull dangling unnoticed from the corner of her mouth, flamethrower cocked, eyes narrowed.

Whoever it was, lowered what was left of Scorch and turned to look at her, featureless mask catching the sun as it teetered red and bloated upon the western horizon.

The two of them locked eyes through smoked glass for a long time before eventually the taller of the two reached behind his or her back, removed a long, glistening object from his or her belt, and tossed it to Tanqueray.

Tanqueray caught it one-handedly as the other blurred out of sight, Scorch's spine and skull held high.

Had Tanqueray known, she'd just been given an Aztec macahuitl, an obsidian-bladed wooden war club taken as a trophy from an Aztec warrior in 1459.

Tanqueray Burnsuck, once known as Honoria Darby, didn't care what the fuck it was, but it felt good in her hand as she swung it overhead so that the black glass blades flashed and whistled through the air…

8.

…_thanks to observation cameras left behind, the Hish learned weeks later that a queen was produced in the remains of New York; a queen who was particularly aggressive, rapidly taking over several surrounding colonies; expanding her own territory exponentially after killing off the resident queens._

_When this particularly valuable queen was removed from her nest for future usage prior to project termination, a battle trophy, an Aztec macahuitl, was found lying nearby._


	10. Glass Dust

There were two things in life that garage mechanic Big Ralph O'Dea, age 60, loved in life: his Barcalounger, which he still hadn't paid off, and beer.

The rest could go to Hell for all he cared, so long as his wife Stella, a timid woman who bruised easily, was waiting by the door of their small, rent-controlled apartment somewhere in the Bronx with an already opened bottle as soon as he got off work down the street at Mac's Garage.

The TV was to be on and tuned to ESPN. Dinner was to be ready so that Ralph could sit on his Barcalounger with it on a TV tray, beer in steady supply, watching – eyes glued to the screen, mouth chewing steadily as he conveyer-belted his wife's sacrificial offering into his mouth one bite after the other.

Big Ralph also loved boxing and football; baseball and bowling came in a close second, with golf a distant, but acceptable, third if nothing else was on.

As to menu, it was predictable; with only a few changes due to unavoidable circumstances, exactly as Big Ralph's mother Rosie had fed Ralph the first thirty years of his life and was as follows:

On Sunday, it was pot roast and apple pie.

On Monday, it was shit on a shingle (leftover pot roast, leftover gravy, and leftover mashed potatoes poured over Wonder Bread) with apple pie on the side.

On Tuesday, it was liver and onions with apple pie on the side.

On Wednesday, it was fried chicken with apple pie on the side.

On Thursday it was ham and beans with apple pie on the side.

On Friday it was frozen fish sticks and Ore-Ida Tater Tots with lemon pie on the side. Lemon pie was a recent innovation: last week the bakery two doors down was out of apple pies, as was the one across the street and six doors down. Once Big Ralph got over the shock at having his routine interrupted and Stella had put ice on her freshly blacked eye, Big Ralph, king of his castle, after sampling what was left of the offending pastry which was sliding slowly and stickily down the living room wall behind the TV, decreed that every Friday from then on was Lemon Pie Night and that was the end of it.

Saturday was Irish stew. Irish stew was one of those things Big Ralph refused to budge on. Lemon pie, yes, Irish stew, no. Stella, when they were first married, once timidly ventured the informal proposal that Campbell's Chicken Noodle with Saltines on Saturday night might be nice for a change, but Big Ralph persuaded Stella that Campbell's Chicken Noodle with Saltines on Saturday night was out of the question. Stella, cowering bloody nosed between the sink and the stove, had to agree that yes, Big Ralph was right, Campbell's Chicken Noodle, Saltines or no Saltines, was completely unsuitable for Saturday night and that she'd been a fool for ever suggesting it.

And so Big Ralph's life went on for thirty-odd years, undisturbed except for the occasional garbage strike, blizzard, blackout, or new TV unless you counted Stella's miscarriage after the disagreement over Chicken Noodle Soup with Saltines or her gall bladder attack five years later which interrupted the Super Bowl – San Francisco (26) vs. Cincinnati (21).

Gallstones and pies aside, this Thursday night was right on schedule – even if Big Ralph had a brief argument with his boss at closing time over a '01 Chevy transmission, which the boss won, leaving Big Ralph cowed as usual – and this being Big Ralph's schedule as dictated by Big Ralph, Big Ralph, belt loosened, was mechanically chewing his way through a third portion of ham and beans as supplied by Stella, who stood near the stove, slotted spoon at the ready, faded hair flying absently from the bun she kept it in, her flat feet in their usual ratty fuzzy pink slippers.

Tonight Stella'd had enough.

The plainer of two sisters, she'd settled for Big Ralph when her little sister became a high powered attorney after graduating from New York Law School in Lower Manhattan. A good girl, Stella listened to her mother: a woman's place was in the home, never mind that N.O.W. business which involved burning bras and being your own person. If you were a real woman, you found a man, any man, and got married - end of story.

An hour after marrying Big Ralph, Stella found herself wondering if her younger sister, Marcie, who'd caused no end of heartbreak for their mother by refusing to learn how to cook, moving out, and wasting all the money she earned waitressing at Kresky's Café on tuition – didn't have the right idea and that mamma was a big fat idiot.

This thought was quickly knocked out of Stella's head by Big Ralph's meaty fist when she didn't hand him his beer fast enough. As daddy was just like Big Ralph, Stella forgot what she was thinking about and got down to the business of being Big Ralph's wife – a full time job if there ever was one.

But tonight was different.

Tonight, for no particular reason, before Big Ralph got home, Stella had taken one of Big Ralph's empty beer bottles out of the trash can by the stove, wrapped it in a dishtowel, and with one of Big Ralph's biggest hammers, pummeled it into dust.

Dust which sat, still wrapped in the remains of the dish towel (which had faded daisies on it, by the way) on the faded kitchen counter of their little rent-controlled apartment with its bare light fixtures and faded wallpaper from the 1930s.

Stella worked around it, opening genaric cans of Navy beans before dumping them one by one into the big pot on the back burner, followed by onions, three chicken bullion cubes, and a bay leaf.

Later Stella pushed it to one side when she unwrapped the half-thawed ham from the grocer's and cubed the meat before scraping it into the pot from her worn cutting board with the back of her worn kitchen knife.

The dust, still in its towel, also witnessed the arrival of the usual apple pie, still warm from the bakery two doors down.

Stella still wasn't sure what she was going to do with this dust, the remains of the last earthly shell of a Bud, but having it nearby felt… nice.

Nice ladies… didn't put ground glass in their husband's dinner.

Nice ladies… remembered their place and did their job: taking care of their men.

Stella… was not feeling nice.

So when Big Ralph bellowed for a fourth plate of ham and beans, Stella scooped out a generous portion and then neatly sprinkled a tablespoon of the finest dust over the entire steaming mess as Big Ralph slouched farting in front of the TV, oblivious.

Stella was halfway out of the kitchen with her wifely burden of murder when a commotion started outside in the darkening street.

Big Ralph hollered at Stella through a mouthful of ham and beans to go see what was going on - his team was in the middle of a play and he couldn't be bothered.

That was when something fell heavily against the front door of their little rent-controlled apartment with its faded 1930s wallpaper and bare light fixtures.

Despite having been born and raised in the Bronx, Stella without looking through the peephole first unlocked all six deadbolts plus the little chain lock on the top with her free hand and screamed, the plate of well-seasoned ham and beans hitting the floor with an unnoticed splat.

What hulked over Stella was far worse than Big Sam, even when he was 30 and a local heavy-weight boxing champion – there were thousands more outside on the street, but the one in front of Stella was enough.

With a shriek Stella turned to flee, slipped in what she'd just dropped, and hit the worn carpet with a messy thud. Her cries were abruptly cut off, but not fast enough for Big Ralph, who was trying to watch the game.

"Stella, goddammit, if you don't shaddap, I'll shut ya up myself…" Big Ralph heaved himself out of his still unpaid for Barcalounger and stomped heavily towards the source of his interruption before what towered and drooled over Stella registered.

Mouth working, Big Ralph lowered his fist and crapped himself.

What had invaded Big Ralph and Stella's home of thirty years and more, grinned through both sets of teeth at Big Ralph and his sudden evacuation, and after a brief scuffle which involved what might have been a stinger, dragged off Big Ralph and Stella O'Dea in a trail of excrement, glass dust, ham, and beans.


	11. White Knight, Revealed

Life, as far as Vikki Gentsch who sat eating potato salad from her usual five-pound tub balanced on her chest as she sat watching the afternoon soaps was concerned, was blatantly unfair.  
Life had kept her from being Miss America – the meanies had turned her down just because she was twenty pounds overweight, short, and had a bad complexion – this wasn't fair she had wept to her mother over a hot fudge sundae back in 1972. They should have seen her inner beauty instantly and let her take her place beneath the tiara as she deserved. But no, they had been too short sighted - Vikki had to sit eating potato chips in front of the little black and white television in her parent's Bronx living room watching some bimbo who obviously wasn't half as beautiful inside as Vicki was giggle as the coveted tiara was placed on her head.  
Vicki was so devastated she'd run weeping to her room at the unfairness of it all and locked the door behind her.  
But not before grabbing six Cokes and another two bags of chips.  
Onion and sour cream.  
Rippled.  
Life also kept Vikki from being the next Mrs. Presley after Priscilla foolishly dumped Elvis in 1973. She'd sent pictures of herself, certain that Elvis wouldn't be able to resist.  
The King never answered her letters. (Obviously some jealous secretary at Graceland had tossed them in the trash, fearing the fierce competition that Vikki offered.)  
When Vikki's father, Al, finally had enough and gently told Vikki that the King, for all his "Love Me Tenders" didn't marry short, plump girls with bad complexions from the Bronx. Vikki ran weeping into her room at the unfairness of it all, screaming, "You don't love me!" a gallon of fudge ripple in one hand and a bottle of Pepsi in the other.  
Instead of the King, Vikki had to settle for Bob Gentsch, the younger brother of her brother-in-law Ralph.  
Bob didn't have swivel hips and a luscious boy face, but when life is unfair, you take what you can get – even if it has a hairline resembling Florida at age twenty-five and flat feet.  
Anyway, Bob obviously didn't have any qualms about short, plump girls with bad complexions who lived in the Bronx. At least he was a good provider, working the night shift at the postal depot, leaving Vikki to watch the soaps, and eat.  
Vikki had tried to work, but that was another unfairness life had tossed at her: the boss on the first day of her job at the deli down the street had told her that she couldn't just stand there eating coleslaw out of the bin in front of her – she had to SELL it to people.  
This upset Vikki so much she ran home and after locking herself in the bedroom she now shared with Bob, ate five pounds of the stuff washed down with chocolate milk.  
Bob, exhausted after a night's sorting and lifting heavy mail sacks, came home to find himself locked out of his bedroom, and after being screamed at for just knocking on the door and asking Vikki if anything was wrong, settled for sleeping the day away on the couch, the windows open in the late August heat.  
Vikki never went back to work – she had soaps to watch.  
Soaps were another unfairness of life.  
Vikki didn't belong in a little apartment in the Bronx – she belonged in a world of glittering adultery, tropical adventures, serious, but glamorous diseases, and designer dresses. She consoled herself in between swabbing out the toilet and cooking Bob's breakfast by watching the world where she belonged on the little flickering black and white screen eventually followed by a flickering rainbow world when Bob gave her a color set for their sixth wedding anniversary, and eating.  
Eating.  
Always eating.  
If Vikki's expanding presence in their little apartment bothered Bob, he didn't show it. He'd learned his lesson a while back when he'd asked Vikki during breakfast if they could maybe have Sunday dinner at his parent's apartment instead of hers – after all, they'd been married five years and had yet to accept his mom and dad's hospitality. And really, it was no big deal – after Services all they had to do was walk a block down from the church and there they'd be – Sunday roast, potatoes, gravy, pie, the works.  
Vikki had burst into tears, screaming that he hated her parents, that he hated her, and that her mother was her best friend – as she lumbered into their bedroom, a bag of Oreos in one hand, a gallon of milk in the other, and crying, locked the door behind her.  
Bob slept the day away on the couch beneath the afghan his mother-in-law had made for them last Christmas after washing the dishes.  
The next day Bob hid behind his newspaper as Vikki lumbered around their tiny kitchen with its pictures of Elvis and countless newspaper clippings of "Love Is…" cartoons.  
This tactic worked – even after their daughter, a tiny, fairy-like blonde arrived.  
Lisl, as soon as she was old enough, took over for Vikki – who was now so heavy that it was hard for her to get up off of her end of the worn sofa that was permanently stationed in front of the television. Lisl did the cooking, the cleaning, the marketing, and Vikki watched her soaps, tears streaming down her face whenever Luke and Laura came on, whenever some glittering infidelity or plot impossibility, be it a spontaneous recovery from a terminal disease or a return from the dead – jaws working mechanically away be it frozen pizza, Oreos, or coleslaw by the tub.  
Bob, as usual, spent his free time on the other end of the couch, a thin, bald little man with stooped shoulders, hiding behind his newspaper from Vikki's most recent outburst over her diabetes, at how the doctor had taken him aside, warning him that if Vikki didn't lose weight and exercise, she would have to have her feet amputated, or worse she could DIE from a heart attack and maybe wasn't it time she maybe cut down a little on the pretzels and cookies? I mean, amputation!  
No longer able to run and lock herself into her bedroom, all four hundred pounds of Vikki sat there, General Hospital in the background and wept loudly at Bob's cruelty, eating the banana cream pie that Lisl had brought her, washing it down with Diet Coke – the only concession to her diabetes she'd made since the mean doctor had broken the bad news five years before.  
How could Bob be so MEAN?  
So CRUEL?  
Didn't Bob see how UNHAPPY she was?  
Obviously Bob didn't LOVE her - when you LOVED somebody, you didn't say MEAN things to them – just like in the old, tattered "Love Is" cartoons she still cherished long after the papers stopped carrying them.  
No. If you LOVED somebody you loved them as they were, you, you, you didn't criticize them, you DEFENDED them.  
Yes, it was obvious – Bob HATED her – and he was a COWARD: he'd say MEAN things to her and then hide behind his stupid paper so he didn't have to see how unhappy his CRUELTY made her.  
Vikki could take Bob's CRUELTY: men in soaps could be mean, awfully mean – but they always made up for it with romantic dinners, trips to Cancun, pink champagne and diamond tennis bracelets wrapped around a dozen red roses on a yacht – when they weren't doing brave things to save the women they LOVED.  
Would Bob do that?  
No, all Vikki ever got from Bob was pure meanness, Bob said things.  
Nasty things, just like her nasty doctor who wanted her to exercise, to stop eating so much, to go to a therapist when there was NOTHING wrong with her as she was – BOB WAS SUPPOSED TO LOVE HER AS SHE WAS LIKE, THE WAY "LOVE IS…" SAID IT SHOULD BE, LIKE IN THE SOAPS - IT WAS ALL SO, so, so so UNFAIR!  
And then after being so MEAN, Bob would IGNORE her!  
Vikki calmed down thanks to a TiVo of General Hospital and the rest of the pie - Bob oblivious to his wife's broken heart behind his newspaper, Lisl, also oblivious to her mother's broken heart, bustled around the kitchen behind them, preparing the trash for Bob to take downstairs in half an hour to the garbage cans out front for Trash Day on his way to work.  
Eyes glued to the world she was so cruelly excluded from, Vikki did little more than grunt at Lisl as she left for her night job at a nearby pizza parlor as salad bar manager.  
Bob, in his blue Postal Service Uniform picking up the black trash bags that Lisl had left beside the stove and hauling them out of the apartment and down the stairs, registered even less.  
When Bob came huffing back up the stairs and slammed the apartment door behind him, back pressed to it, hat askew, face bleeding from six parallel cuts, all Vikki said was, "Quiet -I'm watching my soaps!"  
When Bob started piling furniture in front of the door, Vikki got ready to cry – he kept getting in the way of one fictitious tender kiss or another and it just WASN'T FAIR!  
Bob paused in front of the television, a kitchen chair in his arms, and said quietly, "Vikki, I want you to shut the Hell up for once and listen to me. There's something bad out there."  
Vikki sat up open-mouthed, pie spilling onto her bosom. How dare Bob speak to her like that? And in the middle of her favorite show? Tears welled up in Vikki's eyes, but Bob was relentless, "I don't know where Lisl is. Oh God, honey, you should see it, people screaming, cars overturned, and our baby's out there in the middle of it – one of them almost got me on the sidewalk, I don't know what's going on!"  
Vikki screamed between sobs, "Get out of the way, Luke's on!"  
"Honey, all Hell's broken loose, our daughter's out there and I don't know if she's all right – I don't know if I can protect you from this… this… these…"  
"General Hospital's ON!"  
"Shut up!" Bob tossed the chair into the heap in front of the door, "Now is not the time for soaps. _This is real!_"  
"I WANT my soaps!_ I want Luke!!!"_  
_"What about our daughter???" _  
Something crashed against the barricaded door - Bob and Vikki paused in the middle of their argument – a harassed-looking balding older man in thick glasses and a woman who if she'd only cared a little more about reality and less about a world that existed behind a wall of glass would have been attractive in a perky sort of way watched as the door splintered slowly beneath the weight of whatever it was that wanted in, pushing aside the piled up kitchen chairs, the coffee table, the trash can, and Vikki's grandmother's marble topped washstand, knocking over the television with an unheeded crash, to stand there, drooling on their Strawberry Shortcake Welcome mat from an eyeless face - Vikki cowered, hands stuffed into her mouth, whimpering - this was not how life was supposed to be.  
Gripping the leg of a kitchen chair in one hand, Postal issue can of mace in the other as the thing slowly advanced, paddle-like lumps on its back scraping against the broken doorframe like fingernails on a blackboard, Bob eased his way in front of his wife.  
Others milled in the hall behind their intruder – the light flickering erratically as the cheap fluorescent hall fixtures shattered one by one. Outside Vikki heard screams and cars honking.  
The _thing_ reached out for Bob.  
Bob whacked it soundly over the head before macing it – emptying the can in one terrified surge, the acrid, chemical cocktail making Vikki's eyes burn even as he threw himself protectively across her – going limp as something on the end of the thing's tail stabbed into his neck – glasses askew in the erratic light as his face brushed against hers before three things dragged her down the stairs of their building and somehow managed to stuff her four hundred pound bulk down a nearby manhole where they cocooned her and Bob together against a mass of coaxial cables.  
Tears ran down Vikki's face the whole time, but she was smiling - life was fair after all.  
Bob wasn't Luke, or Elvis, or any of the myriad fantasies that Vikki had attached her dreams to – Bob wasn't handsome, Bob wasn't rich, Bob wasn't even a good singer, but…  
…Bob loved her.


	12. Te perdono, I forgive you

_Really, this story began in 1939 in the town square of a small village in Spain near the end of the Spanish Civil War, when a nation cannibalized itself over ideals… but time has a way of moving on when you aren't looking so that a little girl left standing on cobblestones turns into an old woman standing on cracked asphalt in New York City…_

In the song of the wind in the wires overhead, she found a grenade in the middle of the broad, empty street.

Just lying there, unclaimed among the silent cars.

It was bigger than the ones she remembered from her childhood - heavier too.

So she claimed it, so that it rested heavily in her apron pocket for two days and a night as she hid beneath stinking piles of the dead at night to confuse the invaders until she could take it no more - which was why she was now slowly, painfully clambering her arthritic way through the desecrated, unsteady remains of St. Patrick's Cathedral, remembering a similarly hot day in long-ago and far-away Spain, pin-pulled grenade in one rosary wrapped hand, lit votive candle in the other, her mother's tattered prayer book in her apron pocket, and a limp lace handkerchief draped over her iron gray hair with its tightly wrapped bun at the base of her skinny neck.

Covering her head wasn't necessary; things had loosened up since her childhood, but even now with the Cathedral that she'd gone to for decades a polluted sway-backed shambles, she felt disrespectful entering the ruins with her head bare - her mother always wore a pretty hat, grandmother a black lace scarf, with her five older sisters in simple straw hats; ribbons trailing down their backs...

...and gloves.

White for her and her sisters, black for grandmother, a widow, and a beautiful pearl gray pair for her mother - fine kidskin to match her fine shoes.

Pearl gray shoes, pearl gray shoes left behind the morning after Franco's liberators dragged her father and the rest of them barefoot and in their nightclothes out of their home in the night for the simple sin of not objecting loudly enough to the Republicans for publicly torturing and then burning alive the village priest and the nuns of the nearby convent during the first days of the Red Terror two years before.

Her mother, a woman who loved to sing, loved those shoes; she didn't care about Franco though she'd wept openly about losing the priest, a harmless old man with his books, and the nuns whose voices had drifted down off the mountain every morning and every evening.

She herself always wore sturdy black ones which kept her feet firmly on the ground even here where slime, ashes, and broken stained glass shifted treacherously underfoot – months later she'd been slipped out of Spain and sent to America for safety, one of too many war orphans farmed out, going to work at sixteen, a silent dark-eyed furtive little creature who never married; instead pursuing the dirt and disorder of her employer's homes as if strangling an enemy with her bare hands.

And now, with knees arthritic and hands rough from scrubbing other people's floors, things had come full circle: the city that gave her a home when the land of her birth wouldn't had been raped as her mother, her grandmother, her sisters had been, and left bleeding for all to stare at.

It wasn't going to be like the last time, when she was five and stood helplessly by – something had to be done.

So she gave confession with none but the pigeons roosting on the drunkenly leaning remains of St. Patrick's bomb-scarred twin bell towers and the open sky to hear her before taking final communion with none to administer it but herself: warm cranberry Snapple and a scavenged Saltine cracker - somehow knowing God didn't mind and that the ghost of the priest who'd married her mother and father and buried her grandfather was nearby; all the way from a small town square in Spain.

Once through the charred broken-in doors she passed toppled statues of saints and martyrs mingled with the hardened ooze of the rapists of her home as strangers looked down upon her with empty eyes and swollen tongues – a living _Guernica_, so many frescoed martyrs fading upon the walls of a distant village church with whiffs of pooled natural gas as incense.

Staring up at their faces in the flickering candlelight to give herself strength, she crossed herself and began a prayer from her childhood, in English because she barely remembered her native Spanish:

_O, most beautiful flower of Mount Carmel,  
Fruit of the Vine, splendorous of Heaven.  
Blessed Mother of the Son of God,  
Immaculate Virgin,  
Assist me in this my necessity._

Feeling more confident on the behalf of those she had come to avenge, she passed demons far worse than the Republicans, the Nationalists - even Franco himself - who hissed sluggishly at her in the hot and stinking darkness, her father's garnet rosary digging reassuringly into the flesh of her gnarled hand...

_O, Star of the Sea, help me  
And show herein you are my mother.  
O, Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and earth,  
I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart  
To succor me in my necessity._

She hadn't been able to save her sisters, her mother, her grandmother: forced to watch their stripping and brutalizing because they were the Mayor's women and she, a child of five, was deemed too young for such punishment by the stone-faced commandant's aide who gave the order while his commander sat in her father's house drinking her father's wine.

She couldn't save her father, a quiet man trapped by circumstances with a family and a town to protect - shot down before her after witnessing the brutal shaming of his wife and daughters in front of the entire village.

She hadn't been able to save her mother, her sisters, grandmother... driven at gunpoint out of town, naked and bleeding with shaven heads to starve as an example to anyone who didn't support the new regime...

_There are none that can withstand your power,  
O, show me here you are my mother.  
O, Mary, conceived without sin,  
Pray for us who have recourse to Thee.  
Sweet Mother, I place this cause in your hands._

Votive candle held high at the toppled altar she was in the heart of Hell, the wife of Satan rearing unashamed above her in wanton majesty, bony crown glittering, obscene belly full of eggs. All those long, bitter years she had thought the aide evil incarnate, but looking up into the glassy fangs of her city's rapist, she realized that she'd been wrong - she now remembered seeing tears run down his frozen face as he gave the order for her family's degradation - a young man trapped by circumstances, perhaps with a family of his own. So as she raised the rosary wrapped grenade high before dropping it so that the spoon was released, she smiled, whispering in what little Spanish she remembered while crossing herself with the votive candle, "_Te perdono_, I forgive you...amen."

A muffled double thud echoed among the ruins of New York, the battered neo-Gothic towers of St. Patrick collapsing into themselves like an old dog dying amidst a sudden cloud of dust and ashes, and the pigeons, startled by the noise, flew up into the hot afternoon air, wheeled, to land one by one on the surrounding stumps of buildings.

And then all was quiet once more except for the wind in the wires overhead.


	13. A Night in Gomorrah’s Drunk Tank

Brother Roy Ledbetter arrived in the Big Apple one hot afternoon on a Greyhound bus bearing a battered suitcase stuffed with religious tracts in one large raw knuckled hand, and the well-worn Bible his mama'd given him the day when at the age of six he'd walked that long walk up to the front of the little backwoods Tennessee church he'd been raised in to be Saved in the other, and a sweat-soaked polyester double-knit suit on his back – out to Save New York from itself.

However, the Big Apple proved harder to Save than originally anticipated.

The average New Yorker, of which there were millions, either avoided eye contact, or roughly pushed him aside whenever he tried to Witness, while calling him any number of astonishingly filthy names – in several languages at once.

Obviously, Brother Ledbetter's chosen flock was not interested in being led to righteousness.

Instead, it sent him a cop; a harassed-looking woman with a large, hooked nose and a small gold Star of David on a chain around her neck who interrupted his heartfelt Testifying deep among the concrete canyons from the top of lungs rendered leather from giving long sermons in small churches with no air conditioning by asking him if he had a permit.

The Star of David transfixed Brother Roy – he'd heard of Jews, his daddy back in Tennessee had told him all about Jews, so Brother Ledbetter demanded an immediate apology from her for crucifying the Lord.

Instead of falling to her knees and weeping with shame at what she'd done, the cop asked him if he had a permit in a flat, nasal voice that hadn't the slightest trace of guilt in it.

Shocked by her brazen lack of remorse, Brother Ledbetter stammeringly retaliated with random words of Righteousness – his daddy back in Tennessee hadn't told him what to do should the Jew when confronted with his or her crime, refuse to repent.

The cop gave him a look, took out a can of mace, and gave it a meaningful wave in Brother Ledbetter's general direction. Soldier in the Army of the Lord that he was, Brother Ledbetter backed away, Bible raised between him and this, this uncooperative Jewess; and in between bellows of John 3:16 and random passages of Revelations admitted, "No, I do not. The Lord needs no permit to preach to the lost, be you gone, Whore of Babylon!"

At this point, she arrested him, which somehow felt right to Brother Ledbetter: if the Pharisees of this corrupt city saw fit to persecute him for Witnessing, he was making progress.

Hours later, Brother Ledbetter's teenaged wife managed to wire enough bail money to him at the risk of losing of a year's rent and groceries for her and their six children should he skip town, leaving Brother Ledbetter free once more to pursue the salvation of an entire town, Babylon filled with idols and golden towers, ripe for Salvation even as Mary Magdalene was – and Jews who didn't know their place in Creation… until he noticed a fine, upstanding looking young man in tight leather pants and a tank top beckoning him into a nearby alley with a coy toss of his head.

Certain he'd finally found someone he could Witness to, Brother Ledbetter, somewhat worse for wear from a night in Gomorrah's drunk tank, followed him.

What Brother Ledbetter met in that alleyway was not a sock full of nickels to the back of the head followed by the rapid removal of what few valuables he owned – nor was it a willing pair of ears hungry for God's Word.

No, what he got was a rapid slap-tickle affair of face to face, fly undone, rapid exploration of forbidden territory and heavy breathing, sweaty climax, and a rapid flow of cash from Brother Ledbetter's wallet to his temporary partner's – releasing with a gleeful shout the sin which had led to several congregations soundly voting him back onto the road– with the parents of violated, underage sons fuming, but paid off to avoid prosecution and scandal and a young wife who spent a good deal of time down on her knees despite her constant pregnancies, praying that the Lord would give her man the strength to overcome his weakness even as he ruthlessly ferreted out and revealed the same sin in others with the same zeal as his father.

Set loose on the streets of Sodom, Brother Ledbetter's forbidden pleasures out-shouted the voice of God who constantly thundered threats of retribution at him with the voice of his daddy back in Tennessee – urging him to throw himself fully into the depravity of the city he'd come to save from itself with its bathhouses and bars, massage parlors and dirty bookstores with booths in the back; of alleyways, men's restrooms, and one-room apartments- where a man could bury himself in willing flesh: beautiful boys, big, hairy men who liked it rough, cops, priests, and hustlers, the rich, the poor, the queen, the queer- all laid out like a succulent buffet as Brother Ledbetter greedily shed his wife and children, his Mission, even his own name… free to do as he pleased with whomever, whatever, whenever.

But still, late at night, lounging in his new freedom, the nagging fear of his out-shouted God would resurface: someday what was coming to him, would come… and drag him straight down to Hell just like his daddy back in Tennessee would whenever he caught Brother Ledbetter looking at or touching other boys "that way".

So to drown out the nagging voice of Godly wrath, Honeyboy Dupree would pour himself a stiff one or inhale a line or two before adjusting his leather trousers and new hair in front of a cracked hotel mirror before going back out into the bowels of Gotham in search of new flesh to devour until the night Satan himself decided to pay the Big Apple a personal visit complete with guidebook and an "I (heart) New York" t-shirt.

Honeyboy Dupree was in a stall in the men's room of a big bus terminal, enjoying a bodacious piece of South Carolina ass fresh off the Greyhound, mama's home cookin' still on his breath even as he slurped up Honeyboy's sweet offering of hot buttered corn with righteous delight – can you say amen?

Amen!

Honeyboy Dupree, leaning back against the wall, fly unzipped, feeding man-butter all nice and hot to Cornbread, didn't notice the screams and the breaking glass – no, his back was arched, his teeth were bared, too busy baptizin' some pretty cracker to notice that retribution had finally arrived, can you say amen?

Amen!

He didn't notice either when dark shapes streamed hunchbacked and drooling through the station; neither did the cracker when Honeyboy Dupree caught his breath and parked it on the crapper in time to drink from his strawberry's fountain of youth – no, not until a phallic-headed dark shape tore the grafitted stall door off its hinges, snatching the feast away from Honeyboy Dupree so fast he spurted gravy all over Honeyboy Dupree's face, leaving Honeyboy Dupree cowering alone at its clawed feet beside the base of the shitter in a pool of semen and piss - the belt had landed between his shoulder blades at last – amen!

With a broad, joyful grin lighting up his face, balding, sweaty Brother Ledbetter felt a stab in his side even as they stuck a spear into the side of his crucified Lord on that Day, bearing with it the gift of cold numbness which spread throughout his body even as his own personal demon dragged him down into the depths of Hell… oh children, can you say amen?

Amen.

Come on now, I can't hear you!

Amen!

Say it like you mean it!

AMEN!!!


	14. Boy Genius

To Dodger Blattmann, boy genius age 32, the world was one deep, dark sucking pit; particularly from the viewpoint of his room in his mom and dad's Brooklyn basement apartment, which was wall to wall action figures, vintage horror movie posters, video games, heavy metal CDs, dirty pizza delivery uniforms, loose rolling papers, and socks, none of them matching.

Dude he'd tried, he'd really tried! He'd tried City College, but like, they actually expected him to turn in his work on time, which got in the way of cataloging his action figures – which was way more important. Anyway, they didn't offer any courses in how to use the _Necronomicon_ – one asshole professor even had the nerve to tell him that the evilest book in existence was a deliberate literary hoax on the part of H.P. Lovecraft, WTF????

Obviously University was not for someone of Dodger's level of genius; so he'd tried girls – but they were all too stuck up to have sex with him, even the fat ones.

He'd even tried the Air Force, but like, man they actually wanted him to do what he was told right then and there – so he'd told his First Sergeant right then and there to get bent and quit – why should a dude who could fluently read and write Tolkien runes put up with that shit?

Thoroughly disgusted by the world's blindness to his genius, Dodger holed up in his room at the age of 19 in between trips to the dirty bookstore overhead, the comic book shop across the street, and the mailbox in the foyer so he could pick up all sorts of computer shit he'd won on e-bay – that and his night job for any number of pizza places – Dodger lived a life befitting a genius: playing video games, watching Internet porn, wanking off, smoking pot, and re-reading anything published by TSR, while bitterly condemning the world for not recognizing that he was the genius his mom said he was. What Dodger's dad had to say on the subject of Dodger's genius could fill several encyclopedias and mainly consisted of four-letter words…

…in fact, tonight Dodger's old man was standing outside Dodger's door, which was covered with Spiderman and autographed N-I-N concert posters, bellowing, "Hey genius, turn that shit DOWN!!! And why don't you clean your room f'gawdsakes??? And speaking of rooms, why at the age of 32 do you have to still take up space when your mother could have a sewing room???"

Dodger's mother hovered nervously, trying to referee, "Now dear, don't be so hard… now Al, you know Dodger's sensitive… don't hurt his self esteem!" as Buckethead's best, garnished with a thick curl of pot smoke from the crack beneath flipped them off - Dodger deliberately turned up his sound system to drown out the two old fucktards without even moving his eyes from _World of Warcraft_, where he was rendering epic grief upon his enemies as well as his allies.

Unnoticed the noise on the other side of the door... stopped before the doorknob disappeared, along with the entire door - allowing something similar _to_ but a hundred times _larger_ than one of his favorite action figures to slouch in, the numerous fins on its back catching in the Black Sabbath poster collection over Dodger's bed and pulling it down onto both of them in a blizzard of black and silver paper.

Eyes glued to the screen of his computer, Dodger brushed off the interruption without looking behind him, "Shit, mom, you know you're not supposed to come in here – this is MY room, now get the fuck…"

Drool landed on Dodger's keyboard.

Mom may have had cheap dentures, but she didn't dro…

_Warcraft_ forgotten, Dodger angrily spun around in his ergonomic computer chair just in time to see what the outside world had sent him, only to drop his half-smoked joint onto a mound of socks and uniforms as the thing opened a fanged mouth and another internal one thrust rapidly forward into Dodger's scraggly-bearded acne scarred face…

…proving once and for all to Dodger, boy genius age 32, that the world was indeed, one deep, dark sucking pit.


	15. Dark Mirror

jizzaBel was a strutting peacock of a little girl in a tattooed woman's body with enough facial and body piercings to keep any high-end body artist busy, or she would have if she didn't spend most of her back money on heroin. So jizzaBel compromised, getting partials done by whoever; to be completed whenever she could come up with the scratch to get the job finished if the artist wouldn't take full payment in the form of services rendered.

This would have been great; too bad jizzaBel in between hits and BJs usually forgot who and where she'd had any given tat done, leaving her covered with ink started by one artist, carved out by another, and filled in by a third. Naked, she looked like the walls of a biker bar crapper – the only thing missing was "for a good time call…"

…um, no, rewind, _that_ was on her left butt cheek! jizzaBel had no idea it was even there - the night she'd had the work done she was so strung out on red chicken she didn't even remember going into the shop, much the less what she'd even asked for.

jizzaBel chilled in a cool abandoned parking garage somewhere in the Village with some other kids, slamming pizza and cold greasy French fries fished out of the dumpster behind some dive when she wasn't hustling or adding to her collection of tats with one set of needles and filling in the gaps with another to keep the weight off – which is important if you wanna keep your edge in the modeling business and be a big rock star A-list actress millionaire –which jizzaBel knew she was, only she kept forgetting to add minutes to her Nokia so the _Survivor_ people and the dudes from _Big Brother_ could never return her calls. "Dude, I'm important, they'll call back - you done with that spoon _yet???_"

Sometimes mom (_bitch!)_ back in Peoria, would call jizzaBel whenever she remembered to up her minutes – whining about Bill, jizzaBel's step-dad, and how he was always cheating on her, and when are you coming home, you're only sixteen - why on earth Jessica did you… have to ruin… your pretty face with all that ugly fishing tackle… and… _when… are… you… coming home…_ baby?

Picking at an infected track on the inside of one of her arms on any given Village night, jizzaBel answered the phone pronto –it was phat: _American Idol_ wanted her and only her! _Crap_, it's just mom - so she hung up, and with dirty, matted cyber locks flying, hit the streets looking for Mr. Brownstone, trying to forget the feel of Bill's hands on her ass when she was seven.

After that, she'd get another tat –a gravestone or a cross or some Tribal-Goth shizzle – it didn't matter what it was, it was all good, it was all righteous - only she barely had enough for a hit – shit man, shit - short on cash!

Short on cash meant jizzaBel had to go bug Fat Luis.

Fat Luis was what Bill back in Peoria got off on when he had six beers too many: filthy wetbacks, should all be shipped back to Mexico C.O.D. – takin' jobs from real Americans – which made Fat Luis, who was Puerto Rican, jizzaBel's favorite touch – he had shit, he slung ink, and he did for BJs – if his old lady Maria wasn't around with their six kids getting in the way, he'd grind you a big honkin' tat, maybe a skull or cool shizzle like that – all you had to do was let him in your pants, boy, girl, _whatever_, 'cause F.L. didn't fuckin' _care!_

Suhhhhh-weet! Bitchy Maria and her human larva weren't chillin', so Fat Luis gave jizzaBel mucho bado shitto, leaving her basking in the glow of epic estuffa among the works after the last piece of meat and B-Back left for the night – jizzaBel telling Fat Luis how it was gonna be once Hollywood discovered her, how Paris Hilton and them other three Horsebitches of the Apocalypse would have to move over, all them bitches, to make room for jizzaBel who'd show 'em what it really meant to party – as Fat Luis, cigarette dangling at the corner of his nicotine stained ivory lip plate and huge, fat brown ass working up and down ignored her languid chatter.

It would be fuckin' A-list party time, Disneyland no _WORLD_, first class all the time – finally jizzaBel'd get the attention she deserved, not like when she had the abort… after her step-fath…

Sweating, jizzaBel froze all wide-eyed and skinny hips mashed into the worn, dirty linoleum beneath Fat Luis, falling backwards into a bottomless pit… no more floaties… the estuffa was turning sour on her, boring shizzle like abortions, like Bill, didn't happen to stars… when you were a star, boring shizzle happened to other people… no… jizzaBel was strictly A-list… shizzle-shit never happens to A-list… what the hell was that? - one of jizzaBel's coolest tats ever rose up out of the hot humid night of the Village – the one off of her inner thigh - and pulled a drooling Fat Luis offa jizzaBel before gifting her the sweet sting of a needle which caressed the side of her neck all cold and slick, sending her floating off into a sweet dark mirror where things like step-dads and abortions never happened and jizzaBel was the biggest, baddest star of them all.


	16. Who Else?

She was famous for being famous, an "It" girl from birth, proclaimed a "Star" by her mother who saw to it she got everything – nothing was too good for her: the best schools, the best shops, the best clothes, the best of everything, floating effortlessly through a world that reflected her glory back at her from the moment she could pull herself up by pudgy fingers and look in the mirror herself – silver wasnt good enough for her mouth; her spoon was platinum set with diamonds forming her initials even before she knew how to read them– it was only right.

There were no consequences, her luck, her glory, placed her upon a platform of self-promoted, money-fueled adoration; had she been anyone else, nobody would have noticed her –money protected her, dumping her into the hopper that was her, and her alone, grinding her up; returning her to herself as her and her only – Tiffanys, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Chanel and Choo blinding her with her own incandescence in a trail of perfumed Chihuahuas, champagne and heroin– it was her right.

So, doubtlessly as she hung cocooned and dying in the warren that was once Tiffany's, had she been in any condition to notice, the creature which tore out of her self-promoted torso with such force that her perfect breasts ruptured, sending bloody twin bags of silicone flying bore the beginnings of a tall, bony crown upon its eyeless head, a queen indeed, she would have said– "Who else?"


	17. Into the Growing Night

Dirty and thin, limping on all fours, broken harness dragging on the pavement, the large German Shepard picked his way across Manhattan, the rumble of a retreating thunderstorm mingling with the monotonous arrhythmic impacts of depth charges going off around the now abandoned island day and night.

Goliath had scavenged from tipped over garbage cans and worse the last few days, quartering in between increasingly rare meals, somehow avoiding…_them_.

It wasn't like _they_ had come without warning; earlier Goliath had caught whiffs of _them_ on the wind, from the sewers, from cracks in the sidewalk. As the warning signs increased he'd pawed at his owner's leg, barking hysterically, trying to drag his owner out, away, _anywhere_ but where _they_ were like so many other dogs, trying to tell their people that something was wrong, something terrible was happening, to flee- until his owner gave up on long walks in the canyons of concrete and steel that had been Goliath's home since birth, staying indoors until both dog and owner nearly went crazy from confinement.

Until, unable to take being indoors any longer, they had gone out to enjoy the cool of the evening.

Which was when _they_, the predators, the chasers, the interlopers, had come up out of the sewers and tunnels that made up the hidden guts of the city, ripping their way through the herd that Goliath and his brothers and sisters had spent their entire lives protecting.

Desperately he'd tried to guide his owner to safety, snapping and snarling, teeth sinking into the legs of terrified strangers, ducking and dodging, until the steadying hand that had been his responsibility was ripped from the harness that had been part of both their lives for more days and nights than the dog could remember.

In the quiet that followed the next day, the dog had sniffed around the streets that had been his home, looking for his master, his responsibility.

The white cane he found in the gutter, snapped in two. The scent of the man's hand lingered – Goliath carried it in his jaws for days because he knew the man he guarded would need it – until he'd lost it while being chased one night by one of _them_.

Whining, he'd hidden in the rubble of where a bus had crashed into a storefront until the invader had left, the rising sun driving _it_ back beneath the streets. That night it rained, Goliath risked taking shelter where _their_ stench was strong – two days later he staggered back onto the body-strewn sidewalk, vicious scratches marring his neck and muzzle.

Insides churning, Goliath wandered, hiding, quarreling over carrion with other bewildered guardians and the vultures which came at death's call, scavenging, still sniffing for that particular scent as the depth charges in the waters which surrounded his home continued to boom and pound, as _they_ scuttled and stank underfoot, waiting for sundown.

He caught the scent at last, a mingling of sweat, aftershave, and personal scent, which even included a bit of Goliath himself. It led him limping and staggering, crusted fly buzzing wounds marring his once sleek black and tan coat, guts constantly knotting and unknotting, to a subway tunnel opening, invisible darkness spilling out of it into the noonday sun.

Goliath paused, cowering at the top of the now rubble strew stairs, tail between skinny haunches, muzzle resting blistered paws, the remains of his jaunty yellow coat emblazoned with "Do not pet me, I am working" fluttering in the hot wind which roared between the buildings.

Eventually, the big gaunt shadow of a dog sat up and howled, stomach knotted far worse than he could remember, nearly knocking him over in it's enthusiasm before he staggered to his feet to pick his way, panting and cautious, down the stairs, under the turnstiles, and into the full shadow of _their_ lair.

The stench of shit, carrion, and _them_ nearly drowned out what Goliath's nose was searching for, but he found it, high upon the ceiling. He cocked his head, ears flattened, whining. Too late, ohhhhh, too late.

Goliath threw back his head and howled among the dead of his failure to anybody that would listen, long drawn out cry echoing up and down the now derelict subway tunnel.

_They_ rustled, tails uncoiling, dropping around him from the ceiling, hissing, but keeping their distance as Goliath's howls rose in urgency and volume until ending in a gurgle

The remains of the big dog fell over to one side, entrails steaming as something rose unsteadily to all fours, shaking its elongated head, tail writhing.

The invaders ignored it as they gathered at the mouth of the subway tunnel, waiting for the sun to drop behind the jagged buildings to the west.

Eventually, legs steady, it joined them, crouching on all fours among their two legged stance, and out into the growing night.


	18. Larry

1.

As far as Larry Heidnik was concerned, all women but his Mama were whores.

He knew this was so because she'd tell him, "Lawrence, the only woman in your life can trust is me. All others are whores, filthy, disgusting, dirty whores."

Then she'd roll over in the bed they shared ever since his father had died, her ever-louder snores keeping him awake most of the night as the headlights of passing cars on the street which ran in front of the little GI built house he'd lived in since birth, reflected upon the dingy, nicotine stained ceiling through the nondescript cheap curtains, also the yellowed color of long familiarity with tobacco smoke.

Still, as he'd grown older, he'd had urges, dirty urges, assuaged by dates with Rosy Palm and the occasional filth disguised as literature he'd fish out of the trash cans of the local park when she wasn't looking on the rare days she'd take him for walks, leaning heavily upon him, wheezing with each step around a steady stream of Pall Malls.

2.

At age 13, Larry's mother discovered his collection under the prolapsed cushions of the couch she treated as throne and judge's bench while watching her favorite stories. She'd dropped her lighter down between two of the worn cushions and felt the slickness of Larry's latest date while fishing for it.

Grunting and puffing, she'd heaved herself up, fat rolls moving in majestic slow motion, justice incarnate, and threw the cushions aside, revealing Larry's entire harem.

Let us say, that after Mama lit up a fresh one from the one smoldering in her favorite and overflowing green glass ash tray, she'd let Larry know exactly how she felt about his seeing other women besides his mother behind her back.

Mama's opinion of dirty magazines left Larry cowering behind the large 1960s era console black and white TV with a black eye, a split lip, and the knowledge that he'd committed adultery.

3.

Later that same night Mama heaved herself up off the sofa, TV blaring away in the background, and made a dinner for Larry which didn't come out of a frozen package, Then she'd cuddled and petted him in their bed, murmuring, "Mama loves you, Mama's your only friend, not those whores."

4.

After that, being a good boy, Larry, along with Rosy Palm, would peer through the keyhole of the locked bathroom, whenever Mama took one of her rare baths, large green glass ash tray on the lid of the toilet, overflowing with cigarette ashes, her fat rolls and varicose veins seen in keyhole-shaped sections – looking at Mama was all right, Mamma wasn't a whore.

5.

The years rolled on: Larry going through Junior and then Senior High, trying not to look at the girls and the female teachers, doing his best to be faithful to Mama, and generally failing even as he failed most of his schoolwork, a pudgy, round-faced boy with non-descript hair, acne, and a belly that overlapped his belt, jacking off in one of the school lavatory's stalls – dull resentful hatred smoldering behind his thick glasses as he imagined what he'd do if he could get at them, alone and out of Mama's sight.

6.

Socially promoted, Larry graduated, taking what few jobs the invisible have open to them: janitor, fast food, pizza, and trash- walking through the remains of the little working class GI built suburb he'd grown up in past the whores Mama had warned him about on the way to and from work: they were filthy, disease ridden animals – nothing like her, no, not at all.

At work Larry looked down the blouses of the career women, who were worse, as far as Mama was concerned, as he handed them their lunches over the steel counters at the fast food joints he worked at – they looked nice, but they too, were whores, only with more expensive packaging – what they got up to in closets and mail rooms didn't bear imagining, Mama said…

7.

Larry disobeyed Mama regularly by imagining as much as he pleased, what they got up to, with him on top and the others waiting their turn – just like in the pornies he took in at the little theatre on the corner a block down where Larry could commit as much adultery as he pleased, and where an elderly Chinese man in a frayed white linen suit with dirty knees would, for five dollars, slip out his dentures, unzip your fly, and help you along with your adultery as the flesh colored fantasies flickered above you both in the semen stinking darkness.

8.

Eventually all good things come to an end, Larry, balding at thirty, witnessed Mama's death – sixty years of chain smoking having caught up with her, her wracking coughs which made her entire, ever-expanding body with its perpetual crown of bobby pins and rollers, wobble like so much pale Jell-O, sending her flopping and rolling down the basement stairs, to lie like a beached jellyfish at the bottom, lit by the harsh yellow light of the single 40 watt bulb hanging on a bare wire stapled to a beam.

The fact that one of Larry's hands had somehow shot out and helped her down those stairs as she paused to hack up one or more lungs one her way to the toilet, somehow was missed by the sweating, heaving ambulance crew who had to retrieve Mama's body from the basement a few hours later. This too, was overlooked by the cop who had to file the report, even as nobody at Mama's sparsely attended funeral bothered to ask why the door to the basement had been open at that very moment when the only time anybody ever bothered to go down there was to change a fuse every time the aging electrical wiring of their shared domicile threatened to plunge them both into permanent darkness.

And Larry, standing beside Mama's double wide coffin in his high school graduation suit, buttons threatening to pop off over his sagging gut, didn't bother to bring this up, either.

9.

Larry committed acts of adultery on the same couch which had been Mama's throne that night, harem spread around him in a papery fan, the heat of a New York summer coiled about him like smoke from one of Mama's now permanently stubbed out Pall Malls, one of them now dangling from his own lips as he played out his fantasies, a widower at last.

Still, somewhere as Larry used up an entire box of tissues and the last of Mama's face cream, Mama watched in disapproval.

10.

The next morning Larry took down Mama's favorite picture, the one of Jesus knocking on a door down from where it had hung for years over the big TV, and tossed it down the same stairs, slamming the door firmly behind, before replacing it with the cover of the dirtiest magazine in the collection he'd amassed on the way home from her funeral.

Pretty soon, another joined that particular masterpiece.

And another.

And another.

And another

11.

After a while, it looked like the contents of an entire Adult Bookstore had exploded, x-rated shrapnel coating the entire inside of Larry's, layer upon layer upon layer of exactly the things which Mama had warned him about.

Larry ignored Mama's silent disapproval as he wandered naked and hard through the rooms of the home they once shared.

Other changes occurred, the whores Larry had once walked past, face averted, cock stiff, ears burning, were brought in – the lucky ones left in a disgusted, frightened hurry: the things Larry asked them to do were too much, even for them once he decided that as Mama's widower, it was time to branch out and explore what was going on in his custom x-rated wallpaper, for himself.

A few of them registered complaints with the local police, but who listens to whores, even ones with bloody noses and broken fingers? Anyway, their pimps always had plenty of applicants and Larry always paid whatever was demanded without complaint.

12.

Eventually, Larry dug a pit in the basement where the old-fashioned coal furnace had once lurked, and stocked it with whips and chains.

Larry was done with rent-a-cunts; if he was going to cheat on Mama, he wanted real-estate of his own.

His fumbling attempts at pick-ups after work netted him Hope, an Amish runaway of 14 from Bucks County PA.

Desperate and hungry, she'd agreed to come home with him on his promise of a housekeeping job after a burger and fries –into the pit she went.

13.

Once Larry's new property stopped trying to fend off his rightful advances as her owner, he had all the wallpaper fun with her he pleased, taking her in all ways, claiming all orifices as his – her eyes dull and lifeless as she recited the scripts he beat into her – Bucks County and the whippings Hope's step-father had dished out had been nothing compared to Larry's caresses.

14.

Still, the small legacy that Mama had left him along with the house in his little corner of Manhattan wouldn't last forever, so Larry kept working at one fast-food joint after another – using his position as cashier to eyeball potential bits of real-estate should he ever decide to trade up – something the garbage men had helped him with more than once. Larry had confidence that they would in the case of Hope - Hope, who was starting to get fat like Mama, and had the gall to vomit all over Larry that morning when he'd visited her for a bit of fun before clocking in, forcing him to change work uniforms after he'd beaten her for her insolence.

15.

While rolling pennies that day after the lunch rush, it occurred to Larry that he was going to be a father,

This would never do.

Larry could support a wife and himself on his fast-food wages, but not a child.

So he took care of it that night after work.

Then he'd celebrated by going to a certain grubby little theater and in the semen-stinking darkness, he'd given a certain elderly Chinese man with easily shed dentures a ten dollar tip after he'd enhanced Larry's viewing pleasure.

16.

Ignored by muggers as not worth the effort, Larry swaggered on his way home from the theater in the graffiti twilight; proud that he'd solved a minor economic crisis, ignoring Mama's disapproving wheezes in his head and the sudden massed blare of sirens in distant downtown Manhattan behind him – whatever it was, it wasn't his problem. Turning onto his street, Larry shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his shapeless brown polyester work trousers, street lamps shining off his balding head, playing pocket pool in anticipation of his homecoming with Faith. So engrossed he was in his triumphant he didn't notice the hissing phallus shape rise up before him, or the sharp stinger it offered him from between it's legs on a long, erect tail.

17.

Gripping his cock, Larry was dragged paralyzed down below the street and into the stinking darkness where his mouth was pried open and a thick, fleshy something forced its way down his throat.

18.

Larry came to hours, perhaps days later in that same stinking darkness, throat raw, belly tight and rumbling, Mama's voice, forever belittling, forever scolding in between cigarette hacks, echoing loudly in his head. He'd crawled over what felt like dead bodies towards a light and voices, which turned out to be an open manhole.

He'd climbed out into the harsh white light of afternoon into a silent world of overturned cars and burned out buildings. Larry staggered down the middle of the street towards a group of ragged women and children, clutching at the friction burns on his pudgy, unshaven neck. His glasses hung off of one ear, unheeded, "Hhhhhhhelp meee…"

"Oh my Gawd, he's one a them!" a shrill voice rang out, "Get 'em!  
Larry went down on his knees, retching, their footsteps approached at a run, followed by an explosion of pain in his now rippling belly, coughing just like Mama did when his hands connected with her back… blood spattering on the sun hot pavement, something hard hit him on the back, and then another, Larry landed on his face, rolling over, back arched, tongue out, flabby legs stiff out, heels drumming, shit and piss simultaneously staining his trousers as the source of his pain tore its way through him, coming out between his man boobs - the women he'd gone to for help for screamed, crushing whatever it was in a scalding rush of acid.

19.

Larry's body was left, along with its stowaway, bloody in the middle of the street for the birds to pick at.

20.

One supposes that Larry's ending, of being beaten to death with inner-tube wrapped baseball bats by a group of women with babies balanced on one hip as his ribs burst from the inside from the new life he'd been incubating's attempts at freedom, would have been a comfort to the 14 year old Amish runaway from Bucks County PA.

Too bad Hope'd died days earlier, forgotten and starved, of a blunt trauma administered abortion, a dead fetus between her legs in a pool of fly-buzzing blood and afterbirth.


End file.
